NEWLY ENLISTED. 



A SERIES OF TALKS 



WITH 



Young Converts. 



BY 



THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D., 

PASTOR OF LAFAYETTE AVENUE CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 




AMERICAN TR7tCT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



The Library 



TO MY BELOVED FRIEND 



Dwight L\. Moody, 



WHOSE SINGLE AIM IS TO LEAD SOULS TO JESUS, 



THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS 



AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



COPYRIGHT, 1888, 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



CONTENTS. 

NEWI^Y ENLISTED 5 

ENLISTING FOR LIFE 12 

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 19 

GIRDING THE LOINS 25 

SHOW YOUR COLORS! 31 

TRAINING CONVERTS 37 

SPIRITUAL HEALTH 44 

SOUL-FOOD 51 

WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 56 

CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION 62 

THE MIGHTY WORD "NO" 67 

WATCH! 74 

THE THOUGHT-MILL 80 



4 CONTENTS. 

THE SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE 85 

THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE 93 

FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 100 

CONSECRATION 107 

MORE. ABUNDANT LIFE 114 

PREPAID PRAYERS 121 

A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWER 127 

BRIGHT CHRISTIANS 134 

LABOR FOR SOULS 141 

THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK 147 

KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS 154 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 

During a public ministry which has ex- 
tended beyond forty years I have been brought 
into contact with thousands of persons who were 
just commencing the Christian life. No portion 
of that life is more vitally important than its 
early stages. A new convert to Christ — whether 
he or she is young in years or not — has had but 
a very limited experience; and experience is like 
the stern-light of a vessel; it only shows the path 
that has already been sailed over. But every 
voyager may profit by the experiences of others 
who have sailed the same track and encountered 
the same difficulties or perils. Every word of 
counsel therefore which is in accordance with 



6 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



God's Book and with the actual lives of his peo- 
ple may be of great value to those who are just 
setting out. It is my aim in the following pages 
to present a few such frank and fatherly counsels. 
Some of the chapters may be equally applicable 
to those who are farther advanced in Christian 
growth. But my chief aim is to reach and to 
instruct those who have newly enlisted in the ser- 
vice of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

My dear friends, you must bear in mind that 
conversion is simply an enlisting in the army of 
Jesus. The battles and the hard bivouacs are yet 
before you. " Let not him that girdeth on his 
harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 
We want to impress it upon the mind of every 
young convert that the real conflict has only be- 
gun, and they have done no more than to put on 
their armor and enroll their names. Supposing 
you to be truly regenerated by the divine Spirit, 
what next? 

We would reply that the sowing-time of your 
spiritual spring has just begun. Don't repeat 
the current prattle about being a c< harvested 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



7 



soul gathered into the garner." The church is 
not a granary. You are just beginning to sow 
for yourself; and whatsoever you sow you will 
surely reap. You are forming new habits of 
thinking and acting. You are an utterly inex- 
perienced beginner in an entirely new line of 
life. The first year of your Christian life will 
have a mighty influence on all your future. 
Many a wedlock has been spoiled by a bad hon- 
eymoon. Many a promising convert has been 
ruined by an unhappy start, or at least his hopes 
of spiritual power and usefulness have been 
blasted. 

Begin with a determination to learn Christ's 
will and to do it. This is what that famous con- 
vert near Damascus was aiming at when he in- 
quired so anxiously, u Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do ?' ' It is very well to know what a Bun- 
yan or a Finney or a Moody has written or said 
about the Christian life. But go to the foun- 
tainhead. Go to Jesus in a humble, docile spirit 
and ask him in fervent prayer to guide you. 
Bend your will to his will. He is perfectly will- 



8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



ing to guide the meek and the teachable in the 
right way. I honestly believe that, when a do- 
cile heart sincerely asks to be led and then obeys 
the voice of conscience, that heart seldom takes 
a false step; yea, never does. Jesus promises to 
lead you in the way of all truth. Trust him. 

Conscience is the vital point. You need not 
trouble yourself much about your feelings or your 
frames as long as conscience turns as steadily 
towards Christ as the needle towards the North 
Pole. It is the office of conscience to detect sin 
and righteousness, to decide for one and to reject 
the other. Feelings are very fallacious. Some 
Christians are very devout in their feelings and 
wretchedly deficient in their daily conduct. They 
forget that the best proof of love to Christ is to 
■ 1 keep his commandments. ' ' Fervent Christians 
in the prayer-meeting, they are sorry specimens 
of Christians outside of it. There is a lamenta- 
ble lack of conscience in too much of the flaming 
piety which burns out all its oil in the prayer- 
room or the u praise-meeting," We do not won- 
der at the sneers which are often levelled by 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



9 



shrewd men of the world at this sort of u revival 
religion." See to it that you give no occasion 
for such sneers. See to it that Jesus is not be- 
trayed before his enemies by your inconsistency. 
The best thing you can do for your Saviour and 
your Master is to live an honest, truthful, pure, 
and godly life. Others are watching you. Then 
watch over yourself. 

In putting on your armor don't forget that 
the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Be 
not content with merely reading your Bible; 
study it. Instead of skimming over whole acres 
of truth, put your spade into the most practical 
passages and dig deep. Study the twenty-fifth 
Psalm and the twelfth chapter of Romans, as 
well as the sublime eighth chapter. Study the 
whole Epistle of James. It will teach you how a 
Christian ought to behave before the world. As 
you get on farther you may strike your hoe and 
your mattock down into the rich ore-beds of the 
book of John. Saturate your heart with God's 
Word. 

As for your field of Christian work, you ought 

2 



IO 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



not to have much trouble about that. Follow 
God's leadings and go into the first field of labor 
which opens to you. Do not seek easy posts or 
those which will flatter vanity. Brave Mary 
Lyon used to tell her pupils at Mount Holyoke 
to u go where no one else was willing to go." 
Threescore of her graduates became missionaries 
for Christ Jesus. As soon as you begin to think 
that you are too good for your place, then the 
place is too good for you. Do what you can do 
best. A converted inebriate in my congregation 
has found his field in a praying band for the ref- 
ormation of drunkards. While you are working 
for the Master do not neglect the inner life of 
your own soul. If you do not keep the fountain 
well filled with love of Jesus, the stream of your 
activities will run dry as soon as the novelty is 
over. 

Your daily battle will be with the sins that 
most easily beset you. The serpent often scotched 
is not killed. Paul himself had to give his car- 
nal appetites the u black eye " pretty often. You 
will never get your discharge from this war with 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



II 



the old Adam until you enter heaven. The mo- 
ment you fall asleep the Philistines will be upon 
yon. Challenge every tempter that approaches 
you. The dangerous devil is the one that wears 
the white robe and cozens you with a smooth 
tongue. 

Finally, strive to be a Christian man every- 
where. Carry the savor of your communion 
with Christ wherever you go. Jacob brought 
into his old blind father's presence such an odor 
of the barley-ground and the vineyard that he 
had "the smell of a field which the Lord had 
blessed." Every place you enter ought to be 
the better for your presence. Never disappoint 
the expectation of your Master. He is the best 
master in the universe. Having put on the uni- 
form of his glorious service, wear it until you 
are laid in your coffin. Carry his banner up to 
the heavenly gate. When Death calls your 
name on the roll be ready to answer, " Here!" 



12 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 



Many of my readers may be agitating the 
question in their minds, Ought I to enlist pub- 
licly in the service of Jesus Christ and unite 
with his church ? A vitally important ques- 
tion this for all who are considering it; a very 
important one also for parents and teachers to 
w T hom the young may apply for counsel in re- 
gard to such a decisive step. An immense ma- 
jority of those who unite with our churches by 
confession of faith are under twenty-five years of 
age. The impulsiveness and the inexperience 
of youth are elements of danger; on the other 
hand, the fact that the young have not yet rooted 
down so deeply into old habits of sin is an ele- 
ment of hopeful encouragement. Every pastor 
can find on his muster-roll more or less names 
of those who enlisted for Christ and then drifted 
away as deserters. The list of the wounded and 



ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 



13 



"missing" is sadly large in almost every large 
church. The time for careful inspection on the 
part of a pastor and for thorough self-inspection 
on the part of the candidate is the time of enlist- 
ment. 

The first question of all with you, my friend, 
if you propose such an important step, is this: 
Have I joined my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ? 
Have I been born into a new life by his Spirit? 
Have I found in him what my soul most needs, 
and surrendered that soul, without any reserva- 
tions, to his keeping and control ? . The heart 
union to Christ must precede any public union 
with his church. If you will turn to an unno- 
ticed incident in Old Testament history, you 
will see an illustration of what I mean. Ittai of 
Gath, a blunt honest soldier, led his regiment of 
Gittites in review before King David at a very 
critical time during Absalom's rebellion. The 
old king frankly and generously tells him that 
there is danger ahead if he enlists for the cam- 
paign. But the plucky Philistine has so knit his 
heart to the exiled monarch that his prompt re- 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



ply is: u As the Lord liveth and as my lord the 
king liveth, surely in what place my lord the 
king shall be, whether in death or in life, "even 
there also will thy servant be. n That solemn 
oath of loyalty came from the heart. If others 
turn traitors, Ittai means to stick. He can die 
for the "old flag," but he will never desert. A 
few days later on, and the body-guard of Gittites 
with the valiant Ittai at their head, march back 
triumphantly into Jerusalem, bringing the exiled 
David to his palace and his throne. 

The prime essential with you is that you 
shall put your Saviour just where that loyal sol- 
dier put his sovereign — in the core of your heart. 
You must be ready to say, u Wherever Christ 
leads, I will follow; whatever he commands, I 
will obey." For bear in mind that the chief 
thing you do when you enlist in Christ's service 
is not to subscribe to a system of sound doctrine 
(important though that may be), but to confess 
Jesus as your Saviour and Lord and to pledge 
to him lifelong loyalty and obedience. You join 
your weakness to his strength, your ignorance to 



ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 



15 



his wisdom, your unworthiness to his merits, 
your interests to his oversight, your poverty to 
his resources, your whole self to his service. If 
you do that sincerely, Christ becomes responsi- 
ble for you. He will provide for you spiritual 
armor. He will furnish you the daily rations of 
truth and grace to feed you. His precious prom- 
ise is, u My grace is sufficient for you." His 
guaranty is, " No man shall pluck you out of my 
hands; because I live ye shall live also." Christ 
accepts no volunteer for six months or for a sin- 
gle campaign. If you enlist, you must enlist for 
life. On the blade of that sword of the Spirit 
which the Captain of your salvation hands to 
you is inscribed: u He that endure th unto the 
end shall be saved." 

But you may inquire, u Just how ought I to 
feel and just what should I be when I take the 
lifelong obligation of church membership on my- 
self?" God's Word gives a very brief answer 
when it declares that if you trust in the Lord 
Jesus Christ you shall be saved. This inward 
faith must be evidenced by daily conduct. My 



1 6 , NEWLY ENLISTED. 

own custom as a pastor is to put into the hands 
of every applicant for admission into the church 
a brief statement of the nature of church mem- 
bership and the following six questions: i. Have 
you seen yourself to be a sinner against God? 

2. Have you not only repented of your sins and 
sought forgiveness, but do you hate all manner of 
sin and pray to be delivered from its dominion? 

3. Is your hope of acceptance with God founded 
upon the Lord Jesus as your atoning Saviour, 
and upon him only? 4. Have you given your 
heart to Christ, and are you willing to follow 
him whithersoever he shall lead you? 5. Is it 
your honest purpose — in reliance on his grace — 
to cleave to Christ as your Redeemer and your 
Guide to the end of life ? 6. In order to main- 
tain your Christian life do you conscienciously 
practise the duties of prayer and the study of 
God's Word as your daily rule of conduct? 

You will notice that these interrogatories im- 
ply an enlistment for life. Also that they em- 
brace the two core ideas of Christianity, which 
are to abhor sin and to love Christ — to turn from 



ENLISTING FOR LIFE. 



sin and to follow Christ. These seem to my 
mind to be the Scriptural evidences of regenera- 
tion. The new life in your soul may as yet be 
very feeble; it may be only the weak pulse-beat 
of an infant; the blade of grace may, like the 
blades of grass in May, be very small ; but if the 
life imparted by Jesus is there, then you may 
strengthen it by an open confession of Him. 
When Christ bestows converting grace he de- 
mands confession. Love prompts it. A fire 
kindled in a stove reports itself; concealment is 
impossible. If nobody among your associates 
ever suspects or supposes that you are a Chris- 
tian, then you ought to doubt if you are one. 
Be honest with yourself and with God. Ask 
him to search you and to guide you aright; and 
if after self-examination and testing you are per- 
suaded that Jesus Christ has begun to live in your 
soul, then openly enlist in his service. " Do you 
think that you love Christ ?" I asked a young 
convert recently. The prompt answer was, U I 
know it." Why should he not know it; for love 
is a conscious emotion and act of the heart. Do 



Newly Enlisted. 



3 



i8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



not hold back because enlisting for Christ in- 
volves responsibility and will excite the watch- 
ful observation of others. You need that ; wit- 
nesses are intended to be watched and examined. 
If enlistment puts you into hard battles, all the 
better. Cowards and shirks win no victories 
and wear no crowns. 

Pitch your standard high and then push on 
and fight on up to your colors. Do not be dis- 
heartened by some failures and repulses; there is 
no soldier who has not known some defeats. 
Peter was badly defeated in Pilate's hall; but it 
made him a more watchful and a stronger war- 
rior ever afterward. In religion as in war, it is 
going " under fire" that makes the true soldier. 
The Bible phrase "a perfect man" really signi- 
fies a full-grown man, but how can you reach 
that unless vou be^in ? 

Do you desire to be on Christ's side at the 
Day of Judgment? Then enlist on that side 
now, and say to your Master, u Lord, wherever 
thou art, whether in life or death, there will thy 
servant be ! n 



HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 



*9 



HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 



" How many loaves have ye?" was our 
Lord's question to his disciples as he was con- 
fronted by a hungry multitude on the far shore 
of Gennesareth. He might have brought down 
a shower of manna from the heavens or called 
up a miraculous growth of laden fruit-trees from 
the earth. But he never displayed a wanton su- 
perfluity of power; to make the utmost of what 
they had was a lesson he often taught to his fol- 
lowers. The disciples reply to him that they 
have only seven loaves and a few little fishes. 
He immediately seats the crowd and begins to 
distribute the scanty supply, which wonderfully 
increases in his hands, and again increases still 
more in the hands of the distributers, until the 
whole four thousand are satisfied. Here was a 
miracle of creative power, for at the end of the 
feast there are seven rope-hampers filled with the 
yet untasted food. 



20 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



Ail admirable lesson does this deed of mercy 
teach to every new convert at the very start. 
How much have you got already? Then, with 
the Spirit's help, strive to make it more. This 
is the lesson for you to learn and to put into 
prompt practice. You have discovered a new 
and fresh truth in some texts of God's Book. Let 
this slight taste of the sweetness and meatiness 
of the Bible stimulate you to wider and deeper 
study. A Bible-diet strengthens for Bible-duty. 
To a certain degree you have been convicted of 
your own sinfulness, and have exercised some 
degree of penitence. Probe deeper yet; pray for 
more thorough self-knowledge, and lop off un- 
sparingly every sin that doth easily beset or en- 
trap you. It is a shocking mistake for young 
converts to imagine that they have done up their 
repentance once for all. Friend, those two men 
had got many stages on their journey who gave 
utterance to the fifty-first Psalm and the seventh 
chapter to the Romans. Have you opened your 
lips in a prayer-meeting or to an unconverted 
friend, or laid hold of some effort to do good? 



HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 



21 



Then don't be discouraged by your poor suc- 
cess; push on, and find that there is downright 
luxury in shaming down self and trying to serve 
Christ. Your faith may yet be a mere sprout or 
bulb ; but just as nature is busy in evolving into 
growth the roots and seeds and bulbs she lias (not 
in trying to create new ones), so be thou busy in 
exercising the faith thou hast and asking Jesus 
to enlarge it. Observe that Christ said to his 
disciples, u Bring the loaves hither to me." So 
you must take all your faculties, all your gifts, 
all your endeavors — yes, and all your poor insuf- 
ficiencies—right to your Master. 

Having a capital of grace to start with, de- 
termine to increase it. If one had asked young 
John Jacob Astor, the German emigrant, " How 
much have you got?" he would have replied, 
u Nothing but my brains and my hands." A 
little later he might have said, " I have laid up 
one thousand dollars." But out of the seven 
loaves and few fishes of his scanty youth grew 
the magnificent possessions of real estate that 
made him the richest man of his day in America. 



22 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



You have got to become c c rich towards God 1 ) by 
the same simple principle of economically using 
the gifts which the Holy Spirit has bestowed 
upon you. Every answered prayer must increase 
your faith to pray. Every slip you make, every 
tumble through carelessness or self-confidence, 
should teach you to walk more circumspectly. 
All the satisfaction you feel in being a young 
beginner for Christ should fire you to become 
a larger, deeper, wiser, holier Christian. A rock 
has been smitten in your heart by the hand of 
Christ, and it has begun to give out streams. 
Remember that he who smote the rock that the 
waters gushed out can give you bread also for 
your whole life-journey. I beg you do not be 
satisfied with a dwarfish piety. Some converts 
never grow an inch; they are planted in the 
church and then stunted for life. Their seven 
loaves get stale and dry and their few little 
fishes shrivel up; if they had been distributed in 
God's service they would have multiplied. 

Diffusion brings increase. The more you 
give, the fuller-handed you are. If Andrew or 



HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT? 



23 



Peter had slipped off out of the crowd with a 
piece of barley-loaf and said, " I will make sure 
of this for myself," they would have had only 
that morsel, and when it was gone there were 
nothing for anybody else. There is that scatter- 
eth and yet increaseth; there is that withhold- 
eth, and it tends to penury. I wish I had the 
space to write out here the history of a certain 
gold coin which a poor, hard-toiling young girl 
gave to the Lord; it would be a beautiful illus- 
tration of the multiplication of one loaf into a 
• basketful of blessings. Sow plentifully if you 
want a harvest. You are serving a generous 
Master. The harder you work, the better pay; 
the more you do for Jesus, the more you will 
love him. 

I verily believe that the richest joys of heav- 
en will be the simple enlargement of what we are 
on earth. The few original loaves will be multi- 
plied. The joys of household love will be per- 
petuated and purified. The thirst for divine 
knowledge will be infinitely increased and satis- 
fied. Whatever we did for Jesus here will be 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



our " treasure in heaven" when we get there. 
Death is not the end of serving Christ; it is only 
the transfer to a higher and wider realm in 
which they all " serve him day and night in his 
temple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall 
spread his tabernacle over them." If we have 
desires after holiness here, we shall there attain 
unto the spotless robe and to the perfect likeness 
of our Lord. The faint glimpses of Jesus here, 
as " through a glass darkly," will then become 
the enrapturing sight of the King in his beauty. 
All this exceeding weight of glory will only be • 
the natural outcome and enlargement of what 
began here when we began with Christ, and he in 
us. Then, young friend, how many loaves have 
you to start with? See to it that they are all 
brought to your Master, and by the multiplica- 
tion-table of grace you will bless others around 
you and have several full hampers for heaven. 



GIRDING THE LOINS. 



25 



GIRDING THE LOINS. 



" Wherefore, gird up the loins of your 
mind," is the stirring exhortation of that same 
enthusiastic disciple who had once girded his 
fisherman's tunic about him and leaped out of 
the boat to swim to his Master. The ancients, 
as our readers know, were accustomed to wear 
loose, flowing garments, and when any strenuous 
exertion was required, they gathered the folds 
of their drapery and bound a girdle about their 
waist. A spiritual process similar to this is es- 
sential to a vigorous, effective Christian life. 

Jesus Christ does not put you or me into his 
church just to make us comfortable. Nor is get- 
ting to heaven the sole object or even the chief 
object of becoming a Christian. Obedience to 
Jesus Christ is the first thing. This is the core 
of Christianity. The phrase " girding the loins " 
implies readiness for duty. On that last night 

4 



26 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



in Egypt the children of Israel were commanded 
to stand with girded loins and sandalled feet, 
with staves in their hands, ready to be off on 
their exodus at a moment's notice. Paul at the 
start of his grand career inquired, "Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do ? n At the finish he ex- 
claimed, "Now I am ready to be offered up!" 
We pastors soon discover who are the minute- 
men in our churches. Whether it be work or 
money or service of any kind that is required of 
them, their cheerful response proves that Christ 
has the first hold on their hearts. Eagerness for 
the fight marks the true soldier; eagerness for 
the run made the successful Olympic racer; eag- 
erness to do Christ's will, or even to endure 
hard blows for his Master, marks the happy, 
ready-hearted Christian. The moment that a 
minister counts sermon-making a drudgery his 
girdle has broken. 

2. Another idea suggested by the apostle's 
phrase is the compacting of all our powers upon 
the work we have in hand. Consecration is not 
enough without concentration. Paul's "this one 



GIRDING THE LOINS. 



27 



thing I do" tightened his resolves and kept him 
from frittering away life on trifles. Sir Isaac 
Newton's secret of success was u intending his 
mind upon the thing." Pericles only knew one 
street in Athens, the street that led from his own 
house to the Executive Chamber. At this sea- 
son of the year the feeble sun-rays may be so 
focused bv a burning-glass as to set wood on fire. 
I know some men and women of moderate abili- 
ties, who under the concentrating power of the 
love of Christ make wonderfully useful Chris- 
tians. This compacting of one's self for the 
duty at hand is well described by the current 
phrase of a man's " pulling himself together." 
Some church members go to pieces for want of 
a stout girdle. 

3. Loin-girding also implies a wholesome 
idea of restraint. Laxity is the curse of the times 
in doctrine, in preaching, in social life, and in 
church life. Loose thinking leads to loose liv- 
ing. The very word u religion " signifies some- 
thing that holds us together and binds us to God. 
We cannot do just as we like. The people who 



28 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



clamor for liberty to do as they please and who 
scout at Bible restraints as a yoke of bondage, 
are the very people who drift away into vaga- 
bondage. A robust Christian, like a robust sol- 
dier, understands the value of drill and disci- 
pline, and learns to obey the higher powers. It 
is not a good sign when a follower of Christ be- 
gins to loosen his girdle. He is preparing to 
shirk or skulk or go to sleep. Tighten the loins, 
brother, and make up your mind that a noble, 
victorious Christian life is not the easiest thing 
in this world. 

Easy things, like cheap things, are of small 
value. The best attainments must be paid for. 
God has put some pretty steep hills on his road 
to heaven, and you will need to gird your loins 
if you expect to climb them. He provides the 
girdle; you have but to clasp it about you. He 
offers you a belt embroidered with these words: 
"My grace is sufficient for thee." Clap it on, 
and you will find that the things which seem 
impossible become possible to a resolute, un- 
shrinking faith. Mr. Moody's negro woman 



GIRDING THE LOIXS. 



2 9 



was about right when she said that if God or- 
dered her to jump through a stone wall, the jump- 
ing was her part, and the getting through was 
his look-out and not hers. God promises that 
he will u gird us with strength, " and that 
strength is always equal to the load to be car- 
ried or the cliff to be clambered. 

It may be a timely text to preach about in 
this age of "liberal" thinking and mucilaginous 
theology. Some people are falling all apart and 
going to pieces from very looseness of principles. 
Weakness becomes wickedness. All backsliding 
in the church starts from loosening the hold on 
Christ. Conscience loosens its grip. The very 
garments which the Christian wears become en- 
tangled in all manner of worldly and sinful prac- 
tices, until he can no longer make headway. 

Wherefore, let us gird up the loins of our 
souls and u be sober." Life is not a frolic, and 
the service of our crucified Lord is not child's 
play. The end of all things is at hand with 
each of us. There is an exultant joy in the 
daring and the dash, the push and the climb, the 



3° 



NEWLY ENUSTKD. 



conflict and the victory, of a well-girded soul on 
his way to his crown. The prize is for the racer 
and none else. They who would fain go to 
heaven in what Rutherford calls a " close-cov- 
ered chariot " may not gain admission at the 
gate; or if they do, they will be ashamed to look 
God's heroes there in the face. Let your loins 
be girded and your lamps be burning, and ye 
yourselves be like unto men who wait for their 
Lord. u Blessed are those servants whom the 
Lord when he cometh shall find watching; he 
shall gird himself and make them to sit down to 
meat and will come forth and serve them." 



SHOW YOUR COLORS! 



3* 



SHOW YOUR COLORS ! 



The name of Capt. Hedley Vicars, the Chris- 
tian hero of the Crimean war, is familiar to most 
of our readers. On the morning after his con- 
version he bought a large Bible and placed it 
open on the table of his room. He was deter- 
mined that an open Bible for the future should 
be his u colors." "It was to speak for me," he 
said, u before I was strong enough to speak for 
myself." His military comrades came in and 
laughed at him-, nicknamed him the Methodist, 
hinted to him that he had better not turn u hyp- 
ocrite;" but in spite of a perpetual guerilla war- 
fare of sneers and scoffs, he nobly stood by his 
colors. Having u clean hands, he waxed stronger 
and stronger." In time he became a spiritual 
power in his regiment, simply by a steadfast, 
bold, decided witnessing for Christ. 

To his early disciples Jesus Christ said, 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



u Whosoever shall confess me before men, him 
will I confess also before my Father which is in 
heaven. n Confession is a broad, far-reaching 
word as the Saviour employed it. It refers first 
to the heart, then to the lips, then to the life. 
Whosoever would be saved must embrace Christ 
in the heart: this was conversion. Next, he 
must acknowledge him with the tongue: this 
was confession, or what we style a 1 1 profession 
of faith." Chiefest of all, he was to honor Christ 
by his daily living: and this was vital Christian- 
ity. * 

Jesus did not refer to the first point when he 
gave the command to confess him u before men." 
He pre-supposed the secret interior work of con- 
version; he pre-supposed the root. What he de- 
manded was the leafing out and the fruit-bearing 
of the tree. He demanded a bold, resolute, out- 
spoken, love-inspired acknowledgment of him as 
their Saviour and their King from every man 
who expected to be acknowledged in turn before 
the Father and the holy angels. This confession 
was to be open, spontaneous, and sincere. Has 



vSHOW YOUR COLORS! 33 

the reader of this paragraph never made such an 
acknowledgment of Christ? Then, my friend, 
you must not be astonished if Christ refuses to 
recognize you in the last decisive hour of judg- 
ment It will then be too late to take the oath 
of loyalty. He who does not confess Christ in 
this world will be lost in the world to come. 

In nearly every community there are a few 
halting, timid, irresolute persons who have a 
trembling faith in Christ, but who do not come 
out decidedly and confess him. They may be 
Christians, but the world is not allowed to 
know it. They carry dark lanterns. " Shining 
lights n they certainly are not. No one is the 
better for their secret, clandestine attempts to 
steal along quietly towards heaven without let- 
ting any one overhear their footsteps. Now this 
is a miserable — we were almost ready to say con- 
temptible — mode of living, this concealment of 
the colors when danger threatens, this following 
along after the church with a vague hope of 
being counted in among God's people when 
heaven's prizes are distributed to the faithful. 

Newly Enlisted. r 



34 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



We do not say that no one can be saved who 
does not openly join some Christian church; but 
we do say that the person who expects Christ to 
acknowledge him in heaven and yet refuses to 
acknowledge Christ u before men" is a self- 
convicted coward, and while disobeying his Mas- 
ter's orders has no right to expect his Master's 
blessing. After over forty years of pastoral ob- 
servation we have come to the conclusion that 
every day spent by the genuine convert outside 
of the church of Christ is almost a day lost. He 
loses the sense of responsibility that he needs to 
feel; he loses the opportunity of doing good; he 
loses ill self-respect, in the respect of others; he 
loses the approbation of Him who has so impres- 
sively said, u Whosoever is ashamed of me before 
men, of him will I be ashamed when I shall 
come in my own glory." When God gives con- 
version he demands confession. To be effective 
and useful this must be prompt, open, hearty, 
and decided. 

But confession does not end with the public 
acknowledgment of Christ before the church. It 



SHOW YOUR COLORS ! 



35 



only begins there. This is one decisive step, to 
be followed by a thousand other steps in the 
same direction. We do know, however, of many 
church members whose single solitary act of 
loyalty to Christ was their standing up to re- 
spond to a church covenant before the pulpit; 
from that moment onward all that the church 
had of them was their idle names on the roll. 
Like too many of the boasted recruits in new 
regiments, they enlisted, drew their "bounty," 
and then u straightway are heard of no more." 
In the campaign for Christ and the truth they 
never answer to the roll-call of duty. It is very 
certain that their names will not be called when 
the victorious Immanuel announces the rewards 
to his faithful followers on ct the sea of glass like 
unto pure gold." 

We are all guilty of too much time-serving, 
too much concealment of truth, too much com- 
promise with Christ's enemies. The boldest are 
not bold enough, and the cowards are as much 
despised by themselves as loathed by their Mas- 
ter in heaven. When will we learn that the 



36 NEWLY ENLISTED. 

only course for a Christian is to "stand up for 
Jesus"? Men expect it of us; they despise us 
for our shamefacedness, and doubt the sincerity 
of our professions. 

" Last night, n said a Christian soldier to his 
chaplain, "in my barrack before going to bed I 
knelt down and prayed, when suddenly my com- 
rades raised a loud laugh and began to throw 

o o 

boots and clothes at me." "Well," replied the 
chaplain, " suppose you defer your prayers till 
after you retire, and then silently lift up your 
heart to God." 

Meeting him soon after, the chaplain said, 
4 4 You took my advice, I suppose. How did it 
answer?" "Sir," replied the soldier, "I did 
take your advice for two or three evenings; but 
I began to think it looked like denying my Sa- 
viour; so I once more knelt down and prayed as 
at first." 4 c What followed?" "Why, sir, not 
one of them laughs now. The whole fifteen now 
kneel down too, and I pray with them." 



TRAINING CONVERTS. 



37 



TRAINING CONVERTS. 



A VERY large proportion of members in our 
churches count for very little except upon the 
muster-roll. When that roll is called for practi- 
cal service they do not answer, "Here!" The 
lamentable statistics of contributions — for exam- 
ple, only eighty cents annually per member to 
the great work of Home Missions — show how 
small are the pecuniary gifts of those comatose 
Christians. The thin attendance at prayer-meet- 
ings in too many churches, the fewness of those 
who take part in them, or in any kind of personal 
effort for souls and the spread of Christ's king- 
dom, are illustrations of the same fact. A large 
portion of the power in the church is a latent 
power. The stream is diverted upon the water- 
wheels of the world, or else runs to waste, less 
than half of it turned upon spiritual machinery. 
One reason, among many, is that new converts 



38 NEWLY ENLISTED. 

are not trained into Christian activity from the 
start. 

Many converts to Christ are still in the morn- 
ing of life, although they may have outgrown 
the Sunday-school. Under thirty years of age 
the habits of individuals are easily moulded; and 
during the thirty years after that they ought to 
be set to work for their Master. The true time 
to enlist a Christian in active service is when he 
enlists in the visible army of Christ by a public 
confession of Christ. If a new convert does not 
open his lips in some devotional meeting during 
the first thirty days, he is apt to remain tongue- 
tied for life. If he or she is not called into some 
sort of service, then doth he or she become a 
drone in the hive. One of the most effectual 
methods that I know of for training new converts 
is by the agency of a " Young People's Associa- 
tion," organised in the church and under the 
oversight of the pastor. There has been such an 
association in the church which I have the honor 
to serve for about twenty-two years. Sometimes 
its membership runs as high as seven hundred. 



TRAINING CONVERTS. 



39 



It embraces three classes of members — active, 
associate, and honorary. Any member of our 
church between the ages of fifteen and forty-five 
may be chosen an u active " member of the asso- 
ciation. Any person of good moral character 
may become an associate member, entitled to all 
privileges except that of holding office. The fee 
of membership is fifty cents annually, and ten 
dollars secures a membership for life. The ob- 
jects of the Association are to hold weekly devo- 
tional meetings, to promote social intercourse, to 
visit the sick, to search out and bring in young 
people, to labor for their conversion, and to do 
whatever will develop the spiritual life of new 
converts. There is a u Devotional Committee, n 
which has charge of the Monday evening meet- 
ing, which is held in the houses of the congrega- 
tion. This committee must select the house, 
have it announced from the pulpit, and see to it 
that the camp-stools and hymn-books are taken 
to the said house in season. 

That meeting lasts just one hour. The leader 
of the service is allowed to occupy fifteen min- 



40 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



utes in opening the exercises. As soon as possi- 
ble after a person is converted he is requested to 
take charge of the meeting; this breaks him into 
the harness at once. No one is allowed to oc- 
cupy more than three minutes in an address or 
a prayer. At the close of the service a half-hour 
is spent in giving introductions and in social 
intercourse. In pleasant weather we expect the 
house to be crowded; but we have seldom had 
the spiritual thermometer so high as to pack a 
house on a stormy evening. Only a pleasure- 
party or a political caucus can do that. 

In these social meetings all are made wel- 
come, and new converts are encouraged to take 
part. There is a freedom felt in a private house 
which cannot be felt by a beginner in the pub- 
lic lecture-room of the church. Most persons of 
modesty and common sense are apt to feel a cer- 
tain diffidence in speaking or praying for the 
first time. Some of our most effective speakers 
made an unpromising start and had one or two 
break-downs before they could, as the oarsmen 
say, "pull themselves together." But it is not 



TRAINING CONVERTS. 



4* 



simply a public speaking and praying service 
into which the Association trains its members. 
They are organized for various kinds of work. 
There is a Visiting Committee to look after the 
sick. There is an Entertainment Committee 
who arrange music, readings, and other pleasant 
features for a monthly sociable — to which the 
whole congregation are invited. The monthly 
entertainments commonly crowd the lecture- 
room or the Sabbath-school hall. There is a 
Temperance Committee which oversees that 
branch of Christian labor. Last evening a meet- 
ing of our young ladies who are interested in this 
blessed work was very largely attended. For 
years we had an efficient corps of tract-distribu- 
ters in the Association; but the removal from 
town of its moving spirits has left this depart- 
ment rather feeble at present. There is also a 
u Relief Committee" for cases of poverty, and 
another one which provides flowers every Sab- 
bath for the pulpit and then sends them to the 
rooms of the sick. 

We have entered more into the details of this 
6 



4 2 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



Association because it has yielded sucli precious 
spiritual fruits. Its graduates are all over the 
West as active Christians ; some of them have 
entered the gospel ministry. It has been a train- 
ing-school for converts, and as such deserves a 
place beside the Sabbath-school in the affections 
and prayers of the church. I should almost as 
soon think of conducting a church without the 
regular officers as without this educational insti- 
tution for new-born souls. It helps to solve sev- 
eral such questions as — how to develop the lay- 
element ; how to cultivate social intercourse ; 
how to save the young for Christ and keep them 
out of the clutch of the devil. In the apostolic 
churches the new material was put to immediate 
use. That was one reason why the word grew 
mightily and prevailed. If the machinery in 
those days was simpler than now, still there 
was organized effort, and that was built on per- 
sonal consecration to Christ, Give us but that, and 
we shall have few drones in the hive. Conver- 
sion without consecration signifies birth without 
growth — blossoms without fruit. 



TRAINING CONVERTS. 



43 



We have drawn upon our personal observa- 
tion in this outline of the work done by the 
Young People's Association of the Lafayette 
Avenue Church; but the same style of work is 
being done in many hundreds of churches by the 
admirable "Societies of Christian Endeavor." 
Every new convert should enroll himself or her- 
self in such a society if it is within reach. Wher- 
ever the circumstances permit we also cordially 
commend the "Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion" as a most excellent training-school in the 
service of Christ. There need be no clash or col- 
lision between the " Y. M. C. A. n and the or- 
ganization in each individual church. 



44 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 



" One hundred able-bodied men wanted," 
was the announcement we lately saw at the head 
of an advertisement for recruits in the Govern- 
ment service. No invalids could pass muster. 
It was duty on deck and among the rigging that 
was required, and not a berth in the hospital. 
As we ministers are recruiting-officers for the 
King, it occurred to us that an announcement 
would not be out of place on the doors of the 
churches, U A hundred able-hearted and able- 
handed men and women wanted for duty." 
There are quite enough now who never answer 
to roll-call, or are stowed away in the berths of 
the sick and sleeping. The essentials demanded 
for good service are these four: the Christians 
needed by the King should be prayerful (i. e., 
full of praying without ceasing), patient, per- 
severing, and powerful with the indwelling 



SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 



45 



Spirit. These four P's constitute the healthy 
Christian. 

Such God commands every redeemed and re- 
newed soul to be. His injunction is, " Be ye 
holy." Holiness signifies health of heart and 
daily life. It is equivalent to the Saxon word 
wholth, and therefore to be holy is to be healed 
from the deadly disease of sin and to be whole 
in the inner man. Regeneration is the recovery 
from the only disease which can cast both body 
and soul into hell. There are several character- 
istics of this healed or renewed state. One is a 
faith which can overcome the world and the 
powers of darkness. A second is a good con- 
science — a conscience illuminated by God's 
Word, kept sweet and wholesome by prayer, a 
conscience alert as the needle to the magnetic 
pole, and one that is a comfort to its owner, and 
not a tormentor. Just what a disordered liver is 
to the body is a bad conscience to the souk 
One chief cause of the spiritual dyspepsia which 
makes so many professors of religion wretched 
and worthless is an ill-conditioned conscience. 



4 6 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



A third evidence of soul-health is a strong 
appetite for the Word and for work. There is 
a hunger for the manna from heaven, and no 
lusting for the flesh-pots of the world. It is not 
the confectionery of fiction or the " mixed wine" 
of sensual amusements, or even the spiced stim- 
ulants of sensational sermons, that such a soul 
hungers for, but for the strong meat and the 
honeycomb of the inspired Word. An appetite 
for Bible-diet on the Sabbath and Bible-duties 
all through the week keeps a Christian athletic. 
He can mount up with an undipped wing, as 
w T ell as run with an unwearied foot. You never 
find such Christians hobbling on crutches or 
with limbs bandaged from a bad fall. 

Since spiritual sickness is the fruit of sin, 
and spiritual health is both possible and obliga- 
tory upon every Christian, how shall the in- 
valids be recovered? "I will restore health 
unto thee, saith the Lord." God works cures 
not by miracles, but by means and by medi- 
cines. One of these is the purgative of truth 
faithfully administered. Finney understood how 



SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 47 

to apply this heroic treatment; but with some 
pulpit-practitioners we fear that it is a lost art 
Ministers ought to read his u Lectures on Re- 
vivals" at least once every year. Our Heavenly 
Father in his restoring processes often employs 
the sharp surgery of trials, and He always knows 
where to apply the lancet. Many a chastised 
Christian, as the bad blood was drawn from him, 
has cried out, "Thy hand presseth me sore!" 
and the answer has been, U I w T ound that I may 
make whole; I can restore unto thee the joys of 
salvation." 

Christ Jesus is the great health-giver and 
health-preserver. Do we often enough take in 
the full scope of that wonderful expression, u the 
Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in 
his wings" ? There is hygienic power in phys- 
ical sunshine; it brings not only light and heat, 
but health. It would bring quick recovery for 
many an. enfeebled and diseased soul to come 
back into the light of Christ's countenance. A 
great deal of spiritual sickness springs from bad 
atmosphere ; and the heavenly w T inds of the 



4 8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



divine Spirit alone can sweep away this mala- 
ria. With the powerful breath of the Holy 
Spirit comes a* new and purified and bracing at- 
mosphere. We remember addressing a crowded 
audience once in a country schoolhouse on a 
winter night, and the air became so foul that the 
candles went almost out. u Please to open that 
door. ' ' 

The moment that the opened door let in the 
oxygen of the wintry air, every candle flamed 
up immediately. Perhaps one reason why the 
lights are so deplorably low, and almost gone 
out, in too many churches, is that the atmos- 
phere has become heavy with worldliness and 
unbelief and indifference to the salvation of sin- 
ners. Oh, what a glorious oxygen would pour 
into our churches and prayer-meetings and 
hearts if the Holy Spirit should come like a 
mighty rushing wind, purifying, arousing, and, 
quickening unto the very life of God in the soul ! 
This would be a revival, a living again, a recon- 
version from dead and decaying works into the 
muscle and the glow of a vigorous health. 



SPIRITUAL. HEALTH. 



49 



Such recovery is not to be reached by a 
wholesale process ; it must be the individual 
repentance and restoration of each invalid for 
himself or herself. God says to each one, " Re- 
turn unto me, and I will heal thy backslidings." 
The lepers that came to Christ were not afraid 
to show their loathsome diseases right before the 
very face of the compassionate Son of God. We 
must not be gingerly in our confessions, or seek 
to cover our sins with bandages or pull a plaster 
of apology over the leprous spots. "Wash me 
thoroughly from my iniquities" is the true prayer 
of penitence. This means (as Maclaren has well 
put it), "Wash me, beat me, tread me down, 
hammer me with mallets, rub me with caustic 
nitre; do anything, anything with me, if only 
those foul spots melt away from the texture of 
my soul." 

Such penitence, such prayer, brings pardon. 
Not only pardon for the past, but purity and 
peace with God, and power. Then the penitent 
soul can cry, u Restore unto me the joys of thy 
salvation," and the joys will pour in like fresh, 

Newly Enlisted. *7 



5° 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



full streams after a drought. A church thus 
purified and empowered from heaven will teach 
transgressors God's ways, and once more sinners 
will be converted unto Him. Brethren, this is 
the revival we need; this we can have if we take 
God's plan to secure it. He is the almighty 
and the all-loving Healer. Hope ye in God; 
and we may yet praise Him who is the health of 
our countenance and our God. 



SOUL-FOOD. 



51 



SOUL-FOOD. 



Every living organism feeds on something 
outside of itself. Even the trees would wither 
and die if they could not draw sustenance out of 
the air and sap out of the earth. The human 
soul is a feeding creature. " Hearken diligently 
unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let 
your soul delight itself in fatness." A still more 
remarkable expression occurs in the fifteenth 
chapter of Jeremiah: u Thy words were found, 
and I did eat them." We often employ the same 
figure of speech. A ship-master, hungry for 
tidings from home, lands at a port where he finds 
a letter from his wife. It is only so much paper 
and ink, but by a sort of magical process it not 
only talks to him, but transports the whole 
home-circle before his longing eyes, and he is 
ready to say to his far-away wife, "Thy letter 
was found, and I devoured it." 



52 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



So does the hungry heart of a Christian de- 
vour the words of Him who is the Bread of Life. 
When first awakened to a sense of sin, his mind 
opened its mouth and swallowed eagerly the in- 
vitation, Come unto Me, and I will give you rest. 
The truth thus taken and digested became a 
part of the fibre of the new man in Christ Jesus. 
One reason why multitudes remain impenitent 
and without any hope for eternity is that they 
revolt at unpalatable truths. When their utter 
depravity is set before them, and their condemna- 
tion already before a holy God and the reality of 
a " wrath to come," they revolt, and say, u I can- 
not swallow that." They must take God's bread 
or starve, for he will not change it to suit their 
sinful tastes; they mu.st swallow pungent truths 
or die, for God will not sweeten a bitter medicine 
to please a sinful palate. We ministers or Sab- 
bath-school teachers commit a fatal mistake 
when we dilute or adulterate any bitter doses 
which God puts into our hands as spiritual phy- 
sicians. When the faithful, searching, purging 
truths have been swallowed and have done their 



SOUL-FOOD. 



53 



blessed work, the healed heart has been ready to 
exclaim, "I found Thy words, and did eat them, 
and they have been to me the joy and rejoicing 
of my heart!" 

What delicious feeding there is on the Prom- 
ises! The soul delights itself with them as with 
marrow and fatness. There is no end to the hon- 
ey-comb that distils from the fourteenth chapter 
of John. We can feed more than five thousand, 
besides the women and children, with the sin- 
gle big loaf — "This is the promise which He 
hath promised us, even eternal life." There was 
a great weight of Christian experience in the 
homely vernacular of Uncle Johnson, the vet- 
eran negro, when he said to his pastor, " I 's 
tinking dat if de crumbs of joy dat fall from de 
Massa's table in dis world am so good, what will 
de great loaf in glory be? I wants to get hold 
ob de full dish. O massa, ef you gets home afore 
I do, tell 'em to keep de table standing for old 
Johnson is on his way and is bound to be dere." 

There is a sufficient reason why so many 
members of our churches are so pitiably weak, 



54 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



either to work or to resist temptation. Starva- 
tion has reduced them to living skeletons. A 
Christian soul cannot keep fat and strong on 
daily newspapers or on the best of secular litera- 
ture. Such self-weakening is wickedness. Food 
is fuel to the body, repairing what is burnt away 
by various vital processes. How can a soul be 
either fed or warmed that seldom touches the 
Bread of Life ? All the most growing Christians 
are large feeders on the Word of God. 

The breakfast which I ate this morning is 
driving my pen now over this sheet of paper; 
the same meal sent hundreds of my flock across 
the ferry, and is moving hands and feet and 
brains for the whole day. The food put in comes 
out in physical activities. In like manner a nu- 
tritious sermon may be roast beef to a toiling and 
tempted soul for the whole week; in the strength 
of that strong meat he goes many days. God 
only knows how many slips, how many weak 
acts and utterances, and how many falls, have 
overtaken professed Christians during the week 
simply because they neglected to eat their spirit- 



SOUL-FOOD. 55 

ual rations on the previous Sabbath. They lost 
the very truths and the conscience-strength they 
needed; their sin found them out. 

The words of Jesus, his whole code of duty, if 
eaten and digested and assimilated, come out in 
the daily conduct. Every act of unselfish service 
to others, every triumph over temptation, every 
word spoken for the Master, every submissive en- 
durance of heavy trial, every push upward to- 
wards a higher degree of holiness, is the out- 
come of Christ's commandments and promises, 
wrought into the fibre of the daily life. Paul 
realized the vital importance of this soul-food 
when he exhorted his brethren to " let the words 
of Christ dwell in you (i. e., stay in you as a 
strengthener) abundantly. " God's people can- 
not live on husks. An ill-fed army must either 
flee or surrender. Blessed be the hunger that 
sends our souls to Christ ! 



56 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



WHERE IS YOUR PI^ACE? 



A place for every man, and every man in 
liis place! This motto is as good for Christ's 
church as it was for the army during the war. 
But what is every Christian's right place? 

We answer that it is the one for which God 
made him and for which the Holy Spirit con- 
verted him. To mistake it is a sad blunder; to 
desert it is a disgrace. The Bible acknowledges 
that God made his servants for some special 
" niche," for it says, " Having then gifts differ- 
ing according to the grace that is given us, let us 
wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on 
teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation; 
he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he 
that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth 
mercy, with cheerfulness." The principle here 
laid down is that every man or woman who loves 
Jesus should select and should fill that post of 



WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 57 

duty for which his or her gifts have fitted them. 
But "let no man neglect the gift that is in 
him." 

Some men — like Spurgeon and Newman Hall 
and Bishop Simpson — were created for the pul- 
pit. God gave them clear heads, warm hearts, 
strong lungs and eloquent tongues, and a hunger 
for saving souls. To possess such gifts is a clear 
call to the ministry. And thousands of humbler 
preachers who cannot attract Spurgeon' s crowds 
are yet as clearly called to the ministry of the 
Word as the London Boanerges was himself. 
But the vainglorious creature who cannot attract 
an audience except by sensational " clap-trap" 
or by Barnumish advertisements was certainly 
never called of God to the sacred ministry. He 
may draw auditors, but he commonly draws 
them away from places where they would be 
more profited. 

Suppose a man feels convinced, after deep 

prayer and self-examination, that God has not 

called him to the pulpit; what then? Must 

he be silent? Are all the speaking gifts of the 
8 



58 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



pious lawyer or doctor or merchant or mechanic 
to run to waste? No, verily! Let such pro- 
claim the glad tidings of Christ and the story of 
their own Christian experience in the prayer- 
meeting or the mission-school or the cottage con- 
ference-meeting, or wherever they can find souls 
to plead with. How successful this lay -labor 
may be made, let such men as Harlan Page and 
Richard Weaver and George H. Stuart and D. 
L. Moody and John Wanamaker bear witness. 
Let the powerful lay-preaching heard every day 
in u Fulton Street" answer. Some of the best 
discourses I have ever heard were but five or ten 
minutes long and were delivered in my own 
prayer-meeting. Christian lawyers ought to do 
more of this tongue-work. As a class they are 
too silent in our meetings and Sunday-schools. 
God is opening a wide field for laymen to act on 
" picket-duty n and as skirmishers and sharp- 
shooters in the spiritual warfare. 

What our churches most need (next to the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost) is the development 
of all the members. So much is thrown upon 



WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 59 

the ministry that some of us can hardly catch a 
spare hour for our own family and fireside. A 
city pastor is often expected to prepare three ser- 
mons or lectures, to visit the flock, to see the 
sick, to bury the dead, and to act on a dozen 
committees and to make two or three speeches, 
all in a single week! The church becomes Dr. 

T 's church or Mr. B 's church or Dr. 

C 's church, or some other man's church, 

instead of being the people's church, with some 
gifted man as its overseer and pastor. 

Now I love to work exceedingly, but not one 
whit more than I love to see my congregation 
work. And no man in my flock has any more 
right to turn his spiritual work over upon me 
than he has a right to send me to market for him 
or to cook or eat his dinner for him. He needs 
his work as much as I need mine. In revival 
times the whole church is alive and busy. But 
where and when did the Master ever give a 
" furlough" to three-fourths of our people to 
quit the ranks just as soon as a revival campaign 
is over ? 



6o 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



A Christian who is keen for work will soon 
find his place. If he is "apt to teach," he or 
she will soon gather the Sabbath-school class, 
and will be there, Bible in hand, every Sunday, 
even though the rain is pattering on the pave- 
ments. Commend me to the teacher who wears 
a "waterproof" and always consults conscience 
sooner than the barometer. 

Whoever has the gift of song should join 
God's great choir and sing at every religious ser- 
vice. . The owner of a good voice must give 
account for that voice at the day of judgment. 
We never shall have genuine congregational 
singing until every redeemed child of Christ 
sings from duty and consecrates the gift of music 
to the Lord. Those who expect to sing in 
heaven had better practise here. 

Tract distribution is going too much out of 
fashion. It is a blessed and heaven-honored 
agency for doing good. Every one who has 
some spare time and a tongue and a little pious 
tact can go out with a bundle of tracts to the 
abodes of ignorance and irreligion. 



WHERE IS YOUR PLACE? 



61 



Those who cannot exhort or teach in a Sun- 
day-school or distribute tracts, can at least live 
for Jesus at home and come and join in the pray- 
ers of the prayer-meeting. The oldest, the tim- 
idest, the least gifted, can do surely as much as 
this. Every one too can give something when 
the contribution-box is passed. The gift of a 
" cup. of cold water " in Christ's name has its 
reward. Every one whom Jesus saves has a 
place assigned to him in the vineyard. An idle 
Christian is a monster! 

Friend, have you found your place? 



62 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION. 



Men of the world are ready to admit the 
genuineness of the piety which speaks the truth 
and pays its honest debts. But when a man is 
fervid in the prayer-meeting and frigidly selfish 
outside of the meeting — when he can sing a 
psalm or swindle a neighbor in a bargain with 
the same smooth tongue — he must expect to be 
held u at a discount." This is but right. The 
world is warranted in looking for a high stand- 
ard of character and conduct from those who 
profess to follow the pure and holy Jesus. Chris- 
tians must not find fault with the unconverted 
who find fault with them for any inconsistencies 
of conduct It is a tribute of solid respect for 
Christianity that is paid to it by those who ex- 
pect its professors to be upright and conscien- 
tious. u By their fruits ye shall know them," 
said the Master. Jesus expects and demands 



CONSCIENCE IN RELIGION. 63 

that his followers shall live up to the clear bright 
standard of his Word. 

To do this the conscience must be well edu- 
cated and thoroughly obeyed. A conscience is 
to its owner what a compass is to an ocean 
steamer. Some Christians' moral compasses are 
so constantly deflected by the presence of dis- 
turbing elements in the heart that they " steer 
wild," and often run on rocks. A conscience 
that does not point squarely and unvaryingly 
towards the pole-star of God's truth is a danger- 
ous one to steer the life by. Bible-study is 
necessary to keep our consciences well adjusted. 
A careful man often sets his watch by the sun. 
A careful Christian will be constantly setting his 
conscience by the Bible. Then he can go by it 
without any fear of going astray. Paul makes 
much, but not too much, of having "a good con- 
science." The characteristics of a good con- 
science are quick discernment of sin even when 
it wears a white raiment, and a loud voice to 
warn its possessor when sin is getting too near. 
The office of the conscience is to detect sin and 



6 4 



NEWLY ENUSTED. 



to sound the alarm-bell; then it becomes the 
duty of the will to seize the helm and steer clear 
of the danger. 

What a beautifully-adjusted conscience Jo- 
seph had ! Behind the captivating smile of his 
wanton temptress he detects a lurking devil. 
There is no spectator present except One. God 
is in that chamber. Joseph's first question is 
not, u How shall I do this wrong to Potiphar? n 
but, " How shall I do this great wickedness and 
sin against God?" If he had stopped to calculate 
the chances of Potiphar's ever finding him out, 
he would have probably wrecked himself on the 
spot. He would have taken hell-fire into his 
bosom, as every young man or woman does who 
commits this deadly sin. The first trait of a 
good conscience is that it keeps God ever before 
the eye. 

But of what value is the best instructed con- 
science if it is not obeyed? It was Joseph's one 
decisive act of obedience to conscience which, in 
the end, seated him on the Prime Minister's 
throne in Egypt. It was King Saul's constant 



conscience: in religion. 



65 



throttling of his own conscience that made him 
the gloomy wretch that he was. Paul and Silas 
made the old Bastile of Philippi ring with their 
joyful hymns at midnight, because their spirits 
were in sweet harmony with God. On the 
other hand, it was Judas Iscariot's constant fight 
against conscience which made his career so 
wretched; and conscience got her revenge when 
she twisted a suicide's rope around his worthless 
neck. 

If the secret could be known, this is the rea- 
son why many Christian professors have such a 
sorry time of it and know nothing of joyous sun- 
shine in their religion. They are at war with 
their own consciences. They slip into this sin 
and into that, resolving every time, u This shall 
be the last." But it is not the last. Every vio- 
lence done to their own moral sense makes them 
the weaker and the more wretched. Jesus hides 
his face from them. They take but little com- 
fort in any religious duty, and even come to the 
communion table with the guilty feeling that 
they are u dipping the hand into the dish " only 

Newly Enlisted. Q 



66 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



to betray their Lord. Unless we are very much 
mistaken, the real reason for so much unhappi- 
ness in the tempers and the lives of many church 
members is that their consciences are ill at ease. 
Instead of being a trusted guide and comforter, 
conscience becomes a constant tormentor. Such 
a wounded spirit who can bear ? 

We throw out these few hints with a hope 
that they may discover to certain unhappy and 
unhealthy professors the real reason for their 
dark, and dreary condition. No man can be 
happy unless he sets his conscience u in time" 
w T ith the teachings of Christ and then goes by it. 
He will then find himself in the right frame for 
prayer. He will enjoy his own meditations and 
his communion with his Master. He will be a 
living witness for Christ, never a stumbling- 
block for others. His life, instead of being a 
jangling discord of inconsistencies, will be a 
beautiful harmony, both with the inner voice of 
a pure conscience and with the heavenly voice 
of his beloved Lord. 



THE MIGHTY WORD u NO." 



6 7 



THE MIGHTY WORD U N0.' 



As we walk through history with a Diogenes 1 
lantern in our hand it is always pleasant to come 
upon an honest and a noble man. Such a one 
was Nehemiah, the rebuilder and reformer of 
Jerusalem. He stands in the Scripture gallery 
of characters as John Hampden's statue stands 
in the line of illustrious worthies which flanks 
the entrance to the British Parliament. 

Nehemiah was a man who understood the 
power of that prodigious word 11 No." When he 
left the Persian capital at Shushan, he went 
down to Jerusalem determined to do something 
to relieve his suffering people there. The dear 
old city was in ruins. The Jews who had re- 
turned thither from Babylon were oppressed and 
plundered. The same kind of abuses had crept 
in which have disgraced some of our city gov- 
ernments. Nehemiah lays hold of practical re- 



68 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



forms with an unsparing hand. First he rouses 
the people with a trumpet-peal to " rise up and 
build " the ruined walls. Then he abolishes 
the oppressive taxation and the desecrations of 
the Sabbath and the temple. His predecessors 
in office had been receiving big salaries and had 
allowed their underlings to fleece the people. 
Nehemiah might have cited their example as a 
precedent and followed in their wake — after the 
manner in which greedy office-holders or plun- 
derers thrust their arnfs into public treasuries in 
our day. But his simple, manly statement is, 
" So did not /, because of the fear of God." 
Nobly said! We wish every young man would 
write those sharp, ringing words in his note-book 
and determine to make the same answer when- 
ever he is tempted to do a selfish or a wicked act. 

The most tremendous word in the English 
language is the short yet mighty word NO. It 
has been the pivot on which innumerable des- 
tinies have turned for this world and the next. 
Spoken at the right moment, it has saved multi- 
tudes from disgrace, from ruin — yes, from an 



THE MIGHTY WORD "'NO." 69 

endless hell! The splendid career of Joseph 
turned on the prompt " No n spoken at the very 
nick of time. Had he stopped to parley with 
that wanton woman (as too many young men 
stop to talk with a bright-eyed temptress in the 
street), he would have been lost. 4 ' How can I 
do this great wickedness and sin against God? n 

o o 

saved him from the dizzy edge of the precipice. 
Daniel might easily have said to himself, "Oh! 
everybody about the court here drinks wine and 
lives high on the king's meat. I do not want to 
be thought queer or puritanical." He dared to 
be singular. At the end of two weeks he had a 
cleaner countenance and a sweeter breath than 
any of the fast livers in the palace. "So did 
not I" was the motto of this sturdy young tee- 
totaler. If he had yielded to the current of 
temptation and drifted with it, we never should 
have heard of such a man as Daniel. 

All the people who make a marked success 
in life and who achieve any good work for God 
are the people who are not ashamed to be thought 
singular. The man who runs with the crowd 



70 NEWLY ENLISTED. 

counts for nothing. It is when he turns about 
and faces the multitude who are rushing on to 
do the evil that he commands every eye. Then 
by a bold protest he may <c put a thousand to 
flight." {Bo the young monk, Luther, turned 
about and faced the hosts of the Papacy. His 
heroic "No," nailed up on the church-door of 
Wittenberg, aroused Europe from its delusive 
and deadly dreams. Standing alone, he was re- 
inforced by the Almighty. 

But it is not only the Luthers, the Wilber- 
forces, the John Quincy Adams and the Sum- 
ners, who make their mark by being singular. 
Every young man and woman, in their humbler 
spheres, must come out and be separate from the 
company of sinners if they wish to save their 
characters and their souls. The downward pull 
of sin is tremendous. To be able firmly to say, 
il Yet will not I," requires the grace from above 
in the heart. There is a subtle pull also in the 
drift of simple fashion and usage which carries 
away every one who is not well established on a 
Bible conscience. Three-fourths of all the per- 



THE) MIGHTY WORD u NO." 7 1 

soiis who are drowned on the seashore are swept 
out by the undertow. This is the secret influence 
which takes hold of so many church members 
and carries them off into extravagant living, into 
sinful amusements and all manner of worldly 
conformities. Every true Christian is bound to 
be a " nonconformist. " If he is not well an- 
chored for Christ he is swept away by the 
undertow. The bottom of the great deep is 
strewed with such backsliders. 

I would press this truth home upon every 
young man who reads this page: your salvation 
depends on your ability to say "No." When 
your principle is put to the test, ask God's 
help and stand firm. The messmates of Capt. 
Hedley Vicars sneered at him as a u Methodist n 
and a fanatic. He put his Bible on the table in 
his tent and then stood by his colors. A British 
soldier once told me that Vicars was a spiritual 
power in his regiment. We had just such Chris- 
tian heroes in our army during the war. 

In every school the difference is clearly 
marked between the boy who has moral pluck 



NEWLY EXLISTED. 



and the boy who is mere pulp. The one knows 
how to say "No." The other is so afraid of 
being thought "verdant" that he soon kills 
everything pure and fresh and manly in his 
character and dries up into a premature hard- 
ness of heart. Five lads were once gathered 
into a room at boarding-school, and four of them- 
engaged in a game of cards, which was expressly 
forbidden- by the rules. One of the players was 
called out. The three said to the quiet lad who 
was busy at something else, " Come, take a hand 
with us. It is too bad to have the game broken 
up. We will show 7 you how to play. Come 
along." Now that was a turning-point in that 
lad's life. He nobly said, "My father does not 
wish me to play cards, and I will not disobey 
him." That sentence settled the matter and 
settled his position among his associates. He 
was the boy who could say "No;" and thence- 
forward his victories were made easy and sure. 
I well remember the pressure brought to bear in 
college upon every young man to join in a wine- 
drink or to take a hand in some contraband 



THE MIGHTY WORD u NO." 73 

amusement. Some timber got well seasoned. 
Some of the other sort got well rotted through 
sensuality and vice. The Nehemiahs at college 
have been Nehemiahs ever since. The boy was 
father of the man. 

The only motive that could hold back the 
brave u nonconformist" at Jerusalem was a 
godly conscience. u So did not I, because of tlie 
fear of God" This ever-present principle held 
him firm when temptation struck him as the 
undercurrents strike against the keel. What the 
fear of God did for Nehemiah, faith in the Lord 
Jesus will do for you. Christ must be to you a 
pattern, and he must be to you a power. It is 
not enough to believe on Jesus. You must 
"add to your faith cotirage" (for that is the real 
meaning of the word translated " virtue" in our 
English Bibles). Then, with Christ as your 
model and Christ as your inward might, you will 
always be able to face down temptation with the 
iron answer, " So will not I." 



10 



74 



NEWLY ENLISTED, 



WATCH ! 



Some bells require to be rung very often. 
As there is constant danger from certain quar- 
ters, so there must be constant warnings. When 
our Lord repeats an admonition five times over 
within the space of a dozen lines, we may be 
quite sure that he regarded it as one of supreme 
importance. If we turn to the thirteenth chap- 
ter of St. Mark we discover that he repeated his 
injunction to watchfulness several times, and 
then closed his solemn discourse with the sharp 
stroke on the alarm-bell, 11 1 .say unto you all, 
watch P } 

Those of us who have crossed the ocean in a 
steamship have always gone down to our berths 
on a dark night with a more comfortable sense of 
security from having seen a " lookout" posted 
on the ship's bow. It is the business of that 
sailor to do two things, viz., to keep wide awake 



WATCH ! 



75 



and to report instantly any glimpse of a vessel 
or an iceberg before the steamer's path. His sig- 
nal is the security of every soul on board. Con- 
science is the lookout on the bow in the voyage 
of life. Some people with sinful infatuation put 
conscience at the stern; it may utter its shriek of 
remorse when the sin has been committed and 
the craft has struck the temptation which stove 
in the bow. But a conscience that can do no 
more than moan and weep over sins already com- 
mitted is of little worth; for even that process is 
a very hardening one if continued very long. 

I have observed one very undeniable fact in 
my own experience and in my observation of 
others: this fact is that everything depends on 
the manner in which first sins and first slips 
from the right path are treated. If a first false 
step is promptly met by a thorough repentance 
(as in the case of Peter's lie in Pilate's Hall), 
then the mischief ends. The soul soon recovers 
its healthy tone, and is sometimes the wiser and 
stronger for its sad experience. But if the first 
sin is followed by a second and a third and a 



76 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



fourth without any contrition before God, then 
conscience soon becomes benumbed and power- 
less. In time it is seared as with a hot iron. 
This is the case with those professed Christians 
who lapse into sensual vices or who are detected 
in dishonest defalcations or breaches of trust. 
All these men could have been easily saved right 
after the first transgression; but when that was 
passed without compunction, the rapids soon 
whirled them over the cataract. It is astonish- 
ing to observe how fast sin will anodyne even a 
Christian's conscience. 

i. It is the office of a healthy conscience not 
only to feel keen compunctions when wrong has 
been done, but to detect sin in advance and to 
sound the alarm to the will, which has its hand 
on the helm. The truly righteous man has just 
as many temptations floating across his weather- 
bow as the ungodly or the backslider has. The 
difference is that the good man's conscience de- 
tects the danger and gives the signal to the will 
to " steer clear" of the enemy. Nay, more; 
such a conscience reports the danger to God in 



WATCH ! 



77 



prayer, and prompt help comes from heaven to 
the hand on the helm. Wherefore the Master 
commands us to both " watch and pray." 

2. The eye must be open towards more di- 
rections than one. While a sentinel is steadily 
looking in the quarter whence he expects the 
enemy, he may be surprised by a hand laid on 
his shoulder from behind, and as he turns around 
he finds the foe already inside the ramparts! He 
was watching, but in the wrong direction. The 
devil is a master of strategy. He always finds 
out what gate is unguarded. We are often 
shocked at the fall of certain much-trusted per- 
sons into heinous sin; but not more than the 
persons are themselves when they get their eyes 
open to see u whence they have fallen." The 
fatal mistake of all such is that they did not 
keep the eyes open when the first temptation 
came. 

3. It is always unwise to despise an enemy. 
We never know how many guns he carries un- 
til he has stolen a march on us and opens fire. 
King Edward's garrison fell asleep in Edin- 



7 8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



burgh Castle because they fancied it impregna- 
ble, and despised the little band of Scottish sol- 
diers who were prowling about below the cliff. 
But when Randolph's thirty men had scaled the 
precipice and leaped the walls, they were an 
overmatch for a whole garrison who were asleep. 
The simple reason why the Englishmen did not 
watch that night was that they did not regard a 
score or two of Highlanders worth the watching. 
You and I, dear reader, have sometimes caught 
our hardest blows from the foes whom we under- 
rated. Our Lord himself did not underrate the 
adversary on the mount of temptation. 

4. The best preventive against spiritual as- 
sault and overthrow is to keep up constantly 
the tone and fibre of a truly godly character by 
perpetual living close with God. Multitudes 
live as if there were no God in the broad world, v 
They act as if the Master were away and would 
never return. u Blessed is that servant whom, 
when the Master cometh, he finds watching. " 
It is not only the enemy whom we are to be 
looking after, but our Lord himself I never 



WATCH ! 



79 



know when he will come to inspect my poor 
work, or when he will come with the orders to 
drop the tools into the grave. But a perpetually 
vigilant life of communion and Word-study and 
holy intercourse with him will keep us ever 
ready for " the last call." If we watch thus for 
him he will be ever watching over us, and then 
no deadly danger shall ever befall us. It ought 
to be not only a duty but a delight to be watch- 
ful. For there are so many mercies constantly 
coming in sight, so many opportunities to do 
good, so many beautiful views of God's provi- 
dence, and so many foretastes of heaven, that we 
lose more than we can afford to if we fall asleep 
on our homeward way. Can we "not watch 
with him one hour" ? It will soon be over. 



So 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



THE THOUGHT-MILL. 



Every one of us carries in his or her person a 
more marvellous apparatus than human skill 
ever conceived. It may be likened to a mill 
which is running without any pause, unless it be 
during the unconscious hours of sleep. The 
Creator who fashioned this wonderful mill has 
provided the wheat and corn, which, if well 
ground, furnish food to nourish and strengthen 
and make us happy. But the evil one is ever 
on the watch to throw in worthless chaff or poi- 
sonous tares, which if ground out and consumed 
are fatal to health, and may breed disease and 
death. This marvellous mill is the mind — fear- 
fully and wonderfully made. Fill it with the 
golden wheat of pure and noble thoughts, and 
the outcome of it will be a life w T orth carrying 
up to the judgment-seat. If selfishness and Satan 
supply the grist, then the outcome will be mis- 



THE THOUGHT-MILL. 



Si 



chief, misery, and perdition. Keep thy heart- 
mill with all diligence and watchfulness; for out 
of it are the issues of thy life. As a man think- 
eth in his heart, so is he. 

A person is known by the company he keeps. 
So the thoughts which we harbor within us, and 
which go out through the door of our senses, de- 
cide our characters. Let me but know what 
thoughts occupy most your mind when you are 
alone, and I will determine w T hat manner of per- 
son you are. A true child of God gives house- 
room to pure, quickening, and holy thoughts; 
and he is constantly striving to bar up door and 
windows against wicked intruders. He watches 
his heart-mill lest the tempter fill it with net- 
tles or cloof it with gravel. 

Habitual thinking determines whether we are 
Christ's servants or Satan's bond-slaves. A sen- 
sualist is only a filthy thinker. The walls of his 
mind are hung around with lascivious pictures; 
his very soul becomes a brothel, and it is no easy 
task after conversion to clean this house of un- 
clean imagery. Do a man's thoughts run every 

Newly Enlisted, 1 1 



82 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



day upon the bottle? Then he is a tippler or a 
sot. A miser's mind is simply a money-bag. 
Does another man's mind-mill welcome every 
golden thought from God's Word, from nature, 
and from the workings of the Holy Spirit? 
Then as the sweet, nutritious flour pours from 
between the rollers of a Minnesota grain-mill, so 
do inspiring words and useful plans and godly 
deeds stream out from that Christian's consecra- 
ted heart. 

One of the highest of spiritual luxuries is the 
companionship of pure, exhilarating, and holy 
thoughts. "I thought of Jesus," said devout 
Samuel Rutherford, u until every stone in the 
walls of my prison cell shone like a ruby." We 
can imagine how the white doves fluttered in 
and lighted on John Bunyan's rude table in his 
little Bedford gaol. No king entertained such 
royal guests as the poor tinker, when he set open 
his soul's windows towards heaven. 

On the other hand, there is no greater tor- 
ment than to be an unclean or intensely selfish 
or profane thinker. Such a man is " grievously 



THE THOUGHT-MILL. 83. 

vexed with a devil." Out of such hearts pro- 
ceed evil thoughts, revenges, cruelties, fornica- 
tions, pride, and blasphemies. What a hell in 
advance to have such a heart ! To carry such a 
heart into eternity, and to be locked up with it 
there, would be the worm that dieth not and the 
fire that is never quenched. 

Do you say that you are troubled with im- 
pure and defiling thoughts? Then dortt think 
them. Are you haunted with doubting and dis- 
trusting and skeptical thoughts against God and 
his promises? Don't think them. Watch the 
mill and fling them out. All thoughts have 
their germs. The surest way to kill a sin is to 
kill it in the egg. At the very moment when 
a wicked thought is conceived, or is thrust into 
your mind, crush it ! The little serpent will 
soon become the anaconda which will enfold 
you and strangle you like the fabled Laocoon in 
the embrace of the sea-monsters. 

How important, too, is it to nurse into vigor- 
ous life every germ of pure and heaven-inspired 
thought! Your whole spiritual life will depend 



8 4 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



upon the reception and the treatment you give 
to every good idea born in your soul or awa- 
kened there by the divine Spirit. To smother a 
good thought is often a quenching of the Holy 
Spirit; it has cost the eternal ruin of millions; it 
may rob you of a heavenly hope. 

A wonderful apparatus indeed is this thought- 
mill within our breasts. We cannot guard it too 
carefully. Christ offers us his precious truth to 
supply it, his help to keep it clear from the 
wretched garbage which the evil one would 
fling into it, and his propelling power to drive it 
with all useful and holy activities. The hand of 
Death cannot destroy this marvellous piece of 
God's workmanship; for it is immortal. Keep 
this ever-busy, ever-tempted, ever-active heart of 
thine with ceaseless care and with prayer; and in 
heaven you will find that the pure in heart shall 
see God. 



SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 85 



THE SAFEGUARD OF TOTAE ABSTI- 
NENCE. 

A young man who had just lost an excellent 
situation by a two days' " spree n came into my 
study lately and said to me, u Doctor, I cannot 
understand how it is that I should have made 
such a fool of myself and thrown away my 
chance for a living. This is almost killing my 
little wife." I replied to him, u There is no 
mystery about your case. You have been tam- 
pering with drink a long while, trying to jump 
half way down Niagara. You ought to have 
stopped before you began. It would not have 
cost you one-hundredth part- as much effort to 
have signed a total abstinence pledge several 
years ago as it will now to break loose from this 
terrible habit." I entreated my friend to grap- 
ple. his weakness to God's strength. He signed 
a pledge of entire abstinence, and went away 



86 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



with the desperate look of a man who is pulling 
for life in the rapids in full sight of the cataract. 

That young man is a fair representative of a 
sadly numerous class who u lock the stable-door 
after the horse is stolen. n He may possibly be 
saved, but so as by fire. My plain talk to-day is 
with those who have not yet flung themselves 
into the rapids. I wish to give half a dozen 
common-sense reasons for letting everv intoxica- 
ting drink (whatever its name) entirely alone. 
He who never touches a drop will assuredly 
never become a drunkard. Prevention is easy, 
is safe, is sure; reformation is difficult, and with 
some persons is well nigh impossible. The Jews 
were commanded to build battlements around 
the flat roofs of their dwellings in order to pre- 
vent the children from falling over into the 
street. To put up the parapet cost but little, 
but the want of it might cost broken bones; and 
alas! what human power could recall a dead dar- 
ling to life? I am always thankful that I took 
a pledge of entire abstinence in early boyhood. 
But for that battlement I might have been ruined 



SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 87 

by the drinking usages which were deplorably 
prevalent in my college. u Stick to the teeto- 
tal," said a shrewd old kinsman to me when I 
started for college; and now, after forty years, I 
wish to commend the bridge that carried me 
safely over. 

1. The first argument, my friend, for total 
abstinence is that no healthy person needs an 
alcoholic beverage; and even invalids had better 
be careful how they tamper with it as a medi- 
cine. Sir Henry Thompson and several other 
distinguished British physicians have deliber- 
ately declared that u alcoholic beverages cannot 
in any sense be considered necessary for the 
maintenance of healthy life, that it is not a food 
in any true sense of that term, and that the 
steadiest and best work is best done without it." 
Livingstone, the heroic explorer of Central Af- 
rica, was both a physician and a teetotaler. His 
testimony was, " I find that I can stand every 
hardship best by using water, and water only." 
I entreat you not to fall into the delusion that 
you can do any honest work the better by firing 



88 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



up your nerves with alcohol. If you do, you 
will have to increase the fuel constantly in order 
to produce the effect. Solid food and sound 
sleep are all you require. Even as a tonic medi- 
cine wine and bourbon may cover up a great 
deal; they cure but very little. Several friends I 
have known to be decoyed by them into drunk- 
enness and disgrace. 

2. Therein lies a second reason for avoiding 
all intoxicants. They are deceitful. Not only 
the sting of the serpent, but the subtlety of the 
serpent, is in them. The deception lies in the 
fact that the habit of drinking will become con- 
firmed before you suspect it. That young man 
who came into my study so tortured with the 
adder's bite never dreamed at the outset that he 
was playing with a rattlesnake. Every alcoholic 
drink has in it this quality, that it never satisfies, 
but awakens a constant demand for more. A 
small glass creates a thirst for a larger; one 
draught only whets the appetite for a second. 
This is not the case with any wholesome food or 
beverage. Bread and beef do not breed excess; 



SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 89 

one glass of milk does not arouse a morbid thirst 
for two the next time. But this horse-leech 
quality in alcoholic liquors, which cries, " Give, 
give," and is never satisfied, is the very thing 
that makes them so dangerous. That it is which 
makes it so difficult to drink wine or brandy 
moderately, and so easy to fall into drunkenness. 
A healthful beverage satisfies appetite; a hurtful 
one, like wine or brandy, stimulates appetite 
until it becomes an uncontrollable frenzy. This 
I regard as the Creator's law against alcohol ; and 
when you take your first social glass you begin 
to play with a deadly serpent. 

You may say, " Every one who drinks liquors 
does not become a sot. n Very true, but every 
sot drinks liquors; and not one in a million ever 
expected to become a sot when he began with his 
champagne or his " sherry cobbler. n Will you 
run the risk? I would not. The most deplor- 
able wrecks are those of men or women who 
at the outset considered themselves perfectly 
strong and invulnerable. Nothing from the pen 
of Dickens can surpass a heart-rending letter 
12 



9° 



NEWLY ENUSTED. 



which I received from a cultured gentleman 
(then in an almshouse), who declared that he 
traced all the misery of his life directly to the 

"first glass he ever drank at the N House, 

in the capital of Ohio." First glasses have peo- 
pled hell! With whatever 4 4 odds" in your 
favor, will you run the fearful hazard? Then 
stop before you begin. 

3. A third reason why alcoholic drinks are 
dangerous is that it is the peculiar property of al- 
cohol to strike directly to the brain. Some drugs 
have an affinity for the heart, others for the 
spine. The glass of brandy aims for the brain 
as a hound makes for a hare. In striking the 
brain it overturns the throne of the reason and 
makes a man a maniac. Like the shot in a 
naval battle which hits 44 between wind and 
water," the alcoholic death-shot strikes where 
body and mind meet, and sends both to the bot- 
tom. No brain is proof against it. 

The mightiest man intellectually whom I 
ever saw in America, I once saw pitiably drunk ! 
Alcohol is no respecter of persons; the giant and 



SAFEGUARD OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 91 

the idiot are struck down alike by its stiletto. 
You might as well put the pistol to your brain 
and make swift, sure work with it as to poison 
your brain by the slower and equally deadly pro- 
cess of the bottle. Ninety-nine hundredths of all 
the suicides in the laud began with a thoughtless 
glass. Stop, my friend, before you begin! 

4. All intoxicating drinks are more danger- 
ous in this country than in almost any other, 
from the nervous temperament of our people. 
Our climate is stimulating, and American life, in 
almost every direction, runs at a high rate of 
speed. Youth is commonly stronger at the en- 
gine than it is at the brakes. This is preemi- 
nently true of our young men. One unanswer- 
able proof of the difficulty of stopping the drink- 
habit is found in the fact that so very few are 
actually reformed. Not one-tenth of those who 
enslave themselves to the bottle ever break loose, 
even though they cry out in their sober moments, 
" Would to God that I might never taste another 
drop!" There was a touching pathos in the 
speech of one of "our boys in blue n to the 



9 2 



newly enusted; 



police magistrate after he was arrested for drunk- 
enness. He held up a whiskey flask and said, 
"Your honor, the only enemy that ever con- 
quered me is that!" Yet he admitted that en- 
emy himself and could not dislodge it. 

I might multiply arguments in favor of total 
abstinence as the only certain safeguard. The 
grace of God is powerless if you voluntarily 
yield to temptation. It is a defiance to the Al- 
mighty for you to leap into the rapids and ex- 
pect him to save you from the cataract. The re- 
mainder of my life shall be spent in endeavoring 
to prevent young men from embarking on the 
stream which is all music and mirth at the start- 
ing-point, and all death and damnation at the 
bottom. Tons of arguments and appeals have 
been printed on this vital question, "How to 
save young men from strong drink, " but they 
may all be condensed into one line — Stop before 
you begin ! 



THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 93 



THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 



Young people often ask me the questions, 
"Would it be right for me to go to the theatre? 
If not, then why not? n 

Those who propound these questions are not 
of the dissipated and dissolute class, but clean 
young men and maidens ■ — too clean to be 
smirched by needless exposure to impure influen- 
ces. That such questions are constantly raised is 
not surprising, for the playhouse is increasingly 
persistent in its demands on popular attention 
and patronage. It fills a constantly enlarging 
place in the daily journals. Theatres multiply 
more rapidly than churches in some of our 
great cities. Theatre-going increases more than 
church-goinof. The dead walls are covered with 
pictorial representations of scenes and actors in 
full dress (or in very little dress), and many of 
these are of such disgusting indecency that they 



94 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



deserve suppression by the public authorities. 
If the pictures be so shameless, what must the 
originals be? Before our youthful inquirers be- 
come patrons of the playhouse it is but fair that 
they should know just what perils to their moral 
nature and their welfare as immortal beings they 
are likely to encounter. 

First, The first peril is to purity of character. 
Your eyes and ears are windows and doors to the 
heart. What enters once never goes out. Photo- 
graphs taken on the memory are not easily ef- 
faced or burned up; they stick there, and often 
become tempters and tormentors for a lifetime. 
"I'd give my right hand," said a Christian to 
me once, " if I could rub out the abominable 
things that I put into my mind when I was a 
fast young man." He could not do it; neither 
will you be able to efface the lascivious images 
or the impure words which the stage may photo- 
graph on your very soul. We do not affirm that 
every popular play is immoral, or that every per- 
former is impure, or that every play-goer is on 
the scent for sensual excitements; but the stage 



THE PERILS OE THE PLAYHOUSE. 95 



is to be estimated as a totality, and the whole 
trend of the average American stage is hostile to 
heart-purity. The exceptions do not alter the 
rule. Nor have honest attempts to bring the 
stage up to a high standard of moral purity been 
successful. The experiment, once made in Bos- 
ton, of so managing a theatre as to exclude every 
indelicacy from the stage and every notoriously 
improper person from the audience, ended in a 
pecuniary failure. The puritanic playhouse soon 
went into bankruptcy. The chief object of the 
manager is to make money; and if he can spice 
his evening entertainment with a plot that turns 
on a seduction or with a scene of sexual passion 
or with a salacious exposure of physical beauty, 
the temptation is very often too strong to be re- 
sisted. 

You must take the average stage as it is, and 
not as you would like to have it. It is an insti- 
tution which, if you patronize it, you become 
morally responsible for — as much as if you were 
to patronize a public library or a public drink- 
ing-saloon. As an institution it habitually un- 



9 6 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



sexes woman by parading her in man's attire 
before a mixed audience. Too often it exposes 
her in such a pitiable scantiness of any attire at 
all that if you saw your own sister in such a 
plight you would turn away your eyes in horror. 
Yet you propose to pay your money, through the 
box-office, to somebody else's sisters and daugh- 
ters to violate womanly delicacy for your enter- 
tainment. If "the daughter of Herodias" 
dances to please you, then you are responsible for 
the dance in its influence on both the dancer and 
your own moral sense. There is no evading, be- 
fore God, your accountability for the theatre if 
you habitually support it. What its influence 
upon the average performer is appears from most 
abundant testimony. One of the most celebrated 
actresses of this time informed a friend of mine 
that she " enters a theatre only to enact her part, 
and has very little association with her own pro-^ 
fession." A converted actor once said to me, 
while passing a playhouse in which he had often 
performed, " Behind those curtains lies Sodom." 
Although sorely pressed to return to his old bus- 



THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 97 



iness, he said he would starve sooner than go on 
the stage again. Mrs. Frances Kemble Butler — 
the last living representative of the most famous 
histrionic family of modern times — has in her old 
age emphatically condemned the stage. As an 
institution the American theatre tolerates sen- 
sual impurity in its performers and presents 
scenes of impurity to its patrons. If you become 
one of its patrons, you go into moral partnership 
with the theatre. 

Second. It would be a sufficient condemnation 
of the average playhouse if it stimulates one evil 
passion. But other temptations lurk about it. 
There are dangerous associations to be encoun- 
tered there. It is a prevalent habit with young 
people who attend the theatre to remain until a 
late hour amid the excitement of the plays, and 
then to finish off with a midnight supper or a 
wine-drink at some neighboring restaurant. To 
this perilous practice a young lady of my ac- 
quaintance owed her downfall. Long after sen- 
sible people have laid their heads on their pil- 
lows the habitues of the theatre are apt to be add* 

Ntfwly Enlisted. j -J 



98 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



ing a second scene of dissipation to the first one. 
It must be pretty hard work for a Christian to 
finish up such an evening's experience with an 
honest prayer for God's blessing. That is indeed 
a poor business and a poor pleasure on which we 
cannot w r ith a clear conscience ask our Heavenly 
Father's approval. Certainly there are enough 
innocent, wholesome, and beneficial recreations 
without venturing into the dangerous atmos- 
phere of the playhouse. That is a dear-bought 
pleasure which involves even a risk to the im- 
mortal soul. 

Third. Another peril of the theatre arises 
from the fascination which it too often engen- 
ders. Like wine-drinking, it becomes an appe- 
tite, and a very greedy appetite. To gratify this 
growing passion for the playhouse tens of thou- 
sands of young people most profusely squander 
their money and their time. Other and purer 
recreations become tame and insipid. Even the 
entertainments of the stage become dull unless 
they are spiced with new excitements to the pas- 
sions. Wholesome pleasures cease to please, just 



THE PERILS OF THE PLAYHOUSE. 99 

as a brandy-drinker ceases to be satisfied with 
cold water or a cup of coffee. It is not recrea- 
tion but stimulation — and a very dangerous sort 
of stimulation too — that you will be after when 
you become enslaved by the fascinations of the 
stage. 

My young friends, be assured that no saga- 
cious employer ever chooses a clerk or an ac- 
countant, or any other employe, the sooner be- 
cause he is a theatre-goer. No sensible man is 
apt to select the companion of his heart and 
home because she is a frequenter of a playhouse. 
No wise Christian mother wants her sons and 
daughters there. No pastor expects his youthful 
church members to go into that impure atmos- 
phere without a terrible damage to their piety. 
I do not believe that the theatre has helped 
many souls towards heaven; I know that it has 
sent thousands to perdition. 

Now that I have in kind and candid plain- 
ness of speech pointed out some of the inevitable 
perils of the playhouse, ought you to take the 
risk? 



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NEWLY ENUSTED. 



FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 



"For my sake." These three little words 
are the touchstone of love. The application of 
this touchstone begins with infancy and ends 
only with the end of life. If that baby in the 
mother's arms could speak intelligently it would 
say, "It is for my sake that a mother's eye 
watches unsleeping through the midnight hours 
and her arms hold me until they are ready to 
drop off for weariness." " For my sake" many 
a successful man acknowledges gratefully that 
his parents toiled and economized in order to buy 
books and pay college bills. "For my sake" 
provides the sheltering roof and the arm-chair 
for dear old grandma at the fireside. Take these 
three words out of our language and you would 
rob home of its sweetness and human life of some 
of its noblest inspirations. 

Our divine Master made these words the text 



FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 



IOI 



of several of his most impressive injunctions. 
" Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the 
same shall save it." To newly-converted Saul 
of Tarsus the first message is, "I will show him 
how great things he must suffer for my name's 
sake." Again and again the early disciples were 
exhorted to bear crosses bravely for Jesus' sake. 
Christ came into this world to save us from our 
sins, and chiefly to save us from the abomina- 
ble and damning sin of selfishness. The one 
motive that has the power to lift us out of self 
and to exalt life to its highest and holiest phase 
is heart -love for a crucified Saviour. u Love 
Me more than houses or lands or wife or chil- 
dren," is the first condition of discipleship. No 
soul is truly converted until it cuts loose from 
self-righteousness and accepts Jesus Christ as the 
only ground of salvation. Conversion signifies 
that self has grounded its arms in its very citadel 
and has surrendered the keys of the heart to the 
conquering Saviour. Henceforth it inscribes 
"for Christ's sake" on its banner. The short- 
est and most comprehensive confession of faith 



102 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



that any Christian can phrase is about in these 
words: "It is Christ's business to save me; it is 
my business to serve Christ. n 

" Saviour, teach me day by day 
Love's sweet lesson to obey ; 
Sweeter lesson cannot be, 
Loving him who first loved me." 

The Master never allowed the supreme test 
of loyalty to him to be a mere emotion, however 
fervid. It was a practical test. "If ye love me, 
keep my commandments." Write these decisive 
words upon the walls of every prayer-room, to 
rebuke the rant and the rhapsodies in which too 
many windy professors indulge, while their hon- 
est debts remain unpaid and their own children 
sneer at the pious sham. It is not how many 
promises we make, but how many command- 
ments we obey; it is not how many tears we 
shed, but how many sins we renounce; it is not 
how many sacraments we observe, but how many 
deeds we do for the Master's sake, that decides 
the genuineness of our Christianity. Evermore is 
the eye of our loving Saviour upon us, and ever- 



FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 103 

more is that voice saying unto us, " Live for me; 
take up this cross for my sake." When we are 
sore tempted to an act of retaliation or to some 
sharp scheme that selfishness has varnished over 
with falsehood, that rebuking voice accosts us: 
u Wound me not in the house of my friends." 
Sometimes a suffering servant of Jesus comes to 
us for a proof of sympathy that costs more than 
smooth words. Selfishness begins to mutter 
about " impostors" and u no end to these calls 
of charity." But He who died for both of us 
whispers gently, " Do it unto me. He is one of 
my suffering children. Help him for my sake." 
There is not a negro freedman who solicits aid 
for his struggling church, or a hungry stranger 
who knocks at our door for bread; there is not a 
poor widow that asks for a dollar to pay her rent, 
or a neglected child running in rags and reck- 
lessness to ruin for want of a friend, but ever the 
same voice is saying to us, u Give to them for 
my sake. Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the 
least of these, ye do it unto me." 

One of the little orphan boys in John Falk's 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



German charity school repeated at the supper- 
table their usual grace, "Come, Lord Jesus, be 
our guest and bless the food thou hast provided." 
A lad looked up and said, "Tell us, teacher, 
why the Lord Jesus never comes." u Dear 
child, only believe, and you may be sure that 
he will come to us some of these times, for he 
always hears us." u Then," replied the bright 
lad, "I'll set a chair for him;" and he put one 
by the table. By-and-by a knock was heard at 
the door. A poor travelling apprentice was ad- 
mitted and asked for food and lodging. The lit- 
tle fellow looked at the stranger a few moments 
and then piped out, "Ah, I see! Jesus could not 
come to-night and so he sent this poor young 
man in his place. Is that the way, teacher?" 
"Yes, my boy, that is just it. Every cup of 
water or bit of bread we give to the poor and 
hungry for Jesus' sake we give to Him. Inas- 
much as we do it to the least of our brethren, we 
do it unto our Saviour." 

There are a thousand applications of this prin- 
ciple of self-denial for Christ's sake. Grand old 



FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 



Paul had it in his mind when he wrote, " It is 
good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor 
anything whereby thy brother stutnbleth or is 
made weak." It is not easy for a true Christian 
to keep this text in his Bible and to keep a bot- 
tle on his table. They do not harmonize. The 
bottle means temptation. The text means that 
things w T hich are not always sinful per se should 
be cheerfully given up for the sake of others; and 
the legal liberty of the man or woman whose 
heart is in the right place will never be exercised 
when a moral evil may flow from such exercise. 
We have no right to put a stumbling-block in 
the path of others. As a Christian I am bound 
to surrender every self-indulgence which works 
directly against the best interests of my fellow- 
men, especially if it endangers precious souls for 
whom Jesus died. This principle gives to the 
doctrine of total abstinence from intoxicants a 
broad Bible basis as solid as the Hudson Pali- 
sades. 

The two unanswerable arguments against the 
drinking usages are these: An alcoholic beverage 
H 



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NEWLY ENLISTED. 



endangers me if I tamper with it; it endangers 
my fellow-man if I offer it to him. My Bible 
teaches me to let it alone for the sake of the 
"weak" and those who stumble. Ah, those 
stumblers! How many wrecks the word reveals! 
How many tombs it opens whose charitable turf 
hides out of sight what surviving kindred would 
love to hide from memory ! For Jesus' sake and 
for the sake of the easily tempted who will hide 
behind our example, let us who call ourselves 
Christians put away this bottled devil which con- 
ceals damnation under its ruby glow. This sub- 
ject of self-surrender for Jesus' sake is as wide as 
the domain of Christian duty. To live for Christ 
is the sweetest and holiest life we can live; to 
live for self is the most wretched. Every cross 
is turned into a crown, every burden becomes a 
blessing, every sacrifice becomes sacred and sub- 
lime, the moment that our Lord and Redeemer 
writes on it, "For my sake." 



CONSECRATION. 



107 



CONSECRATION. 



Among the many passages in the Old Testa- 
ment whose translation is vitally improved in 
the new Revision is the following verse in the 
first book of the Chronicles: " Who then offereth 
willingly to consecrate himself this day unto the 
Lord?" King David propounded this question 
to the people of Israel when he was about under- 
taking the noble project of rearing a magnificent 
temple to Jehovah. He called for contributions 
of money and of labor. There was to be no en- 
forced draft of either men or money; every gift 
was to be spontaneous and offered willingly. It 
is the same thought which Paul presents when 
he exhorts us, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, 
as to the Lord." The overmastering love of 
Christ in the soul will make hard labors light 
and unwelcome tasks agreeable and sacrifices 
prompt and cheerful. u Plunged into the at- 



io8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



mosphere of love, the dim flame of obedience 
will burn more brightly, like a lamp plunged 
into ajar of pure oxygen." 

The very word u consecration" savors of 
pious cant in the estimation of some people, be- 
cause they have heard it glibly used by certain 
sentimental Christians in a cheap and flippant 
fashion. Rightly felt and practised, it is the 
very essence of healthy, holy, and happy piety. 
God has a sovereign right to us; in every sweet 
breath of his pure air, in every object of beauty 
our eyes behold, in every line of his precious 
Word, in every step of his providential care, in 
every heart-joy at the mercy-seat, in every prom- 
ise fulfilled and grace imparted, we discover a 
new obligation to be the Lord's. " Ye are not 
your own; ye are bought with a price;" these 
solemn, tender words seal the claim of our cruci- 
fied Master. Christ for me, and I for Christ, is 
the very core of honest self-consecration. 

To be worth anything this must begin with 
and centre in the heart. The whole undivided 
soul must be surrendered to Him who died to re- 



CONSECRATION. 



deem the soul. Christ will not take up with a 
closet or a corner. He demands the complete sur- 
render of the will, the faculties, and the affections. 
A hundred half-Christians cannot make a single 
whole one. The more heart there is in our reli- 
gion, the more joy, the more power, the more 
victory. Nobody succeeds in what is undertaken 
grudgingly; the successful men have always 
been, like Paul, men of one idea. u This one 
thing I do; n " For me to live is Christ." The 
paramount purpose with Isaac Newton was star- 
eyed science; he waited at the posts of her doors 
until she taught him how to weigh the globe. 
Love of his art held Joshua Reynolds to his easel 
for twenty unbroken hours till he had caught the 
coveted conception on his canvas. The great, 
rugged Scotch soul of Livingstone was already 
among the heathen of the Dark Continent before 
he carried his body thither for martyrdom. The 
more of your heart you give to Jesus the more 
will Jesus give you of himself. 

In reading the biographies of many of the 
most vigorous and effective Christians we have 



no 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



been struck with the fact that at the outset they 
entered into a solemn, sincere covenant of self- 
consecration. Something like this has been the 
spirit if not always the actual language of their 
dedication of themselves to God: " Oh, heart- 
searching God and Father, thou hast a right to 
me, as my Creator and Preserver, and as having 
given thy Son to be my Saviour. I thank thee 
that eternal life has been offered to me through 
his atoning death, that the Holy Spirit has 
drawn my heart unto thee, and that thou hast 
called me to thy blessed service. May the Lord 
Jesus Christ dwell in my heart by his Spirit, and 
purify me and fill me unto all the fulness of 
God! Unto thee I do consecrate my heart, my 
body, my time, my possessions, my influence — 
all I am and all I hope to have in this world or 
another. Teach me how to serve thee, and may 
I never grow weary in doing thy holy will. Let 
thy Word abide in me in all wisdom and thy 
grace ever be sufficient for me. Make me stead- 
fast in faith, perfect in love, and abundant in 
labor; and when this poor heart shall cease to 



CONSECRATION. 



Ill 



pulsate on earth, grant me a gracious admission 
as a sinner saved into the higher, holier service 
of thy heavenly kingdom — for Jesus' sake." 

Whoever can in humble sincerity make this 
consecration of himself to God has taken the 
great initial step towards a healthy and happy 
Christian life. When the heart is given to 
Christ and given without reserve or compromise, 
all other things will be quite sure to follow. 
" Holiness to the Lord" will be stamped on 
them as a merchant stamps his trade-mark on 
his wares. Such practical questions as, What 
work shall I engage in, how much time shall I 
devote, and how much money shall I give? will 
be settled by a conscience of which Christ is 
King. Christ will get the best. The first-fruits 
will not be locked up in the granary or the fat- 
test sheep killed for the table of selfishness. The 
whole week will not be monopolized for business 
or household duties and a hurried ten minutes be 
snatched for private prayer or a sleepy hour be 
grudgingly given to a devotional meeting. If 
there is a bright, intellectual son in the family, 



112 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



the first thought will not be to enter him in the 
race for wealth or fame or splendid station, but 
this other thought — May not Jesus Christ have a 
use for this brain and tongue in preaching his 
glorious gospel ? There are some of us ministers 
who in heaven will thank a godly mother for 
having made this very choice for us and for hav- 
ing consecrated us from infancy to this "high 
calling." There are very many other ways in 
which a man may serve God outside of a pulpit; 
but Jesus Christ ought to have the "pick" in 
our schools and colleges, and back of that in our 
homes and households. No young man or wo- 
man ever consecrated himself or herself to the 
work of saving souls and helping their fellow- 
creatures Godward and was sorry for it. 

The question " Where shall I find a field of 
labor for Christ?" must be settled by the other 
considerations — 14 What am I best fitted for? and 
Where am I most needed?" Mary Lyon's in- 
junction to her pupils at Mt. Holyoke was worthy 
of Paul himself: u Young ladies, in choosing 
your place of labor go where nobody else is will- 



CONSECRATION. 



ing to go." That sentence is as near like Holy 
Scripture as Abraham Lincoln's "With malice 
towards none, with charity for all." 

The amount of our property to be consecrated 
to purposes of benevolence should be left to a 
prayer-enlightened conscience. If Christ keeps 
the check-book and the key of the purse, then 
he will get his due share. But not a dollar 
should be given to charity which is demanded 
by honest indebtedness. " Owe no man any- 
thing but to love one another" is a divine rule 
whose claim is as binding as the claim of God's 
treasury. The Bible rule is that every one 
should give "as God hath prospered him;" in 
other words, according to his means. This puts 
the poor widow's mites on a par with the mil- 
lions of a rich donor. The most effective way of 
consecrating money is to bestow it systematic- 
ally — just as the river Nile gives so much water 
and just so much soil and rice-crop every year. 
But, good friends, after you and I have consecra- 
ted our whole selves and all our possessions, we 
shall still meet our Lord in heaven as poor debtors. 

Newly Enlisted. I ^ 



ii4 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



MORE ABUNDANT LIFE. 



HE is a poor specimen of a Christian who is 
satisfied to be to-day no better than he was yes- 
terday. To be barely alive is not enough. Je- 
sus promises to all his blood-bought disciples 
that they shall have "life more abundantly." We 
give away to impenitent sinners or to seeking 
souls some precious promises which belong to 
true believers. U A new heart will I give you; 
a new spirit will I put within you. n Such 
promises reach beyond inquiry-rooms; they are 
for every-day consumption by us who claim to be 
Christians. We need to have a new heart again 
and again, just as our faces require frequent 
washing and our bodies require frequent feeding. 
Christ is an inexhaustible fountain-head of life, 
and it depends upon ourselves as to how much of 
this divine life shall stream into our souls. 

i. One of the indications of an increased 



MORE ABUNDANT LIFE. 115 

Christ-life in the soul will be more vigor. I have 
a tree in my yard that used to issue its promis- 
sory notes in May, and failed to redeem them 
with more than a handful of fruit in August. It 
shook down its beautiful white blossoms in the 
spring, and that about exhausted it. I dug about 
it and applied a strong fertilizer, and now it fills 
a big basket with delicious pears. So does our 
Master often deal with us. He puts in the 
plough of sharp providences that make tearing 
work about the roots and dislodge the vermin 
of besetting sins. With the trials come the 
strengthening graces. When a man's system is 
in a low, impoverished condition he is apt to 
catch any fever that is a-going. So it is a low 
spiritual life that breeds woridliness and stingi- 
ness and censoriousness and other acute attacks 
of sinful lusts. With a sick soul, as with a sick 
body, the problem often is whether there is vital- 
ity enough inside to slough off the disease. " I 
have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not," said 
Jesus when Simon Peter was in a bad way; but 
for imparted grace that ugly attack in Pilate's 



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NEWLY ENLISTED. 



Hall might have been the end of poor Peter. 
When he got the more abundant vigor of Christ's 
Spirit he went through tenfold greater dangers 
unharmed. Why should any Christian be merely 
gasping when he ought to be u strengthened 
with all power in his inner man, according to 
the. might " of Christ Jesus? The more vigor 
we desire the more we shall receive, and the 
more we receive the more we will be able to 
receive. 

2. A second evidence of increased life is an 
increase of faith. A small faith can move mole- 
hills; a stalwart faith can remove mountains. 
It is the feebleness of the grip on God that makes 
it so hard for us to stand the heavy strains or to 
lift the heavy loads. This is the reason why 
some parents and teachers produce no impression 
on the young hearts committed to them; for this 
same reason many pastors reap no harvests. 
u According to your faith be it unto you." That 
is Christ's mode of measurement. Mr.. Spurgeon 
tells us of a fervent, fearless preacher who went 
into a region where wickedness abounded. In 



MORE ABUNDANT LIFE. 



II 7 



one of his first sermons lie said, " Now you may 
squirm and scoff as much as you will, but I tell 
you that before a twelvemonth hundreds of you 
will be converted. I have asked the Lord for 
this, and he will give it to me." And the Lord 
did give him what he looked for and labored for; 
within less than a year there were six hundred 
conversions. Faith signifies the grappling union 
of the soul with the Almighty Saviour. The 
closer the connection the more power flows in. 
A current of electricity sent through a huge 
horseshoe magnet will enable it to support a 
weight of a thousand pounds; stop the current, 
and the weight drops instantly. The more 
abundant our faith the fuller will be the inflow 
of Christ. Paul's secret w T as just this: " Not I, 
but Christ that liveth in me; and the life I live 
I live by faith on the Son of God. ' 

3. If Christ be in us more abundantly there 
will be a great influx of joy. None of us is as 
happy as he or she might be. Some Christians 
carry such a doleful countenance and cheerless 
atmosphere that if they should venture to urge a 



xi8 



NEWLY ENUSTED. 



friend to come to Christ the answer might very 
properly be, "No, I thank you. I have troubles 
enough of my own without adding to them such 
a forlorn religion as yours. n Such Christians 
cheat themselves out of their birthright. Jesus 
assures us that his joy may remain in us and that 
our joy may be full. Raptures are not always 
vouchsafed even to the healthiest disciple. But 
a healthy man will enjoy eating a ripe peach; a 
loving wife enjoys a husband's kiss; and there 
must be something wrong with a man or woman 
who professes to feed on Christ and to do Christ's 
will, and yet finds no delight in it. How can 
we have Jesus in our souls and yet feel no joy ? 
Just as soon expect to find an aviary full of cana- 
ries and goldfinches and larks that should be as 
silent as a tomb. Joy is love looking at its treas- 
ures. The richer we become in Christ's presence 
now and the expectation of dwelling with him 
for ever, the more investments we make in do- 
ing good to others and in saving souls, the more 
abundant will be the casket of our jewels. When 
a person says to me, "I don't enjoy my reli- 



MORE) ABUNDANT LIFE. 



II 9 



gion," the proper reply is, u Then you cannot 
have enough religion to enjoy. Get fuller of 
Christ, and he will put the sunshine into your 
soul and the song into your mouth." 

4. Another token of increased life will be an 
increased resistance to sin and a quickening of 
conscience in every-day transactions. One of the 
most lamentable lacks in too many church mem- 
bers is the lack of a sensitive, healthy conscience. 
" Blessed are they which do' hunger and thirst 
after righteousness " said our Lord. We talk of 
this brother or that one as "weak;" but in eth- 
ics to be weak is to be wicked. It is just these 
weak professors who are bringing shame on the 
name of Christianity. Religious motives may 
burn brightly in prayer-meeting, but be blown 
out like a candle as soon as a strong wind of temp- 
tation strikes them in the open air. Dr. Hodge 
said of a certain eminent Christian, " He was not 
only pious, he was good." A true distinction 
that. Now if the Lord Jesus dwell in our hearts 
more abundantly, the moral sense will be quick- 
ened, the heart will be cleaner, and in that holy 



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atmosphere fraud and falsehood and greed and 
sophistry and injustice cannot breathe. When 
questions of right and wrong arise we will give 
Christ the casting vote. Our whole daily con- 
duct will be straightforward and by the air-line, 
because we give the helm into the hand of Him 
with whom is no variableness or shadow of turn- 
ing. 

Are all these graces of faith, power, joy, love, 
and practical godliness attainable? Of course 
they are. Yonder tree has been made luxuriant 
in foliage and germs of fruit by simply drawing 
the vital sap up into trunk and boughs. Even 
so, if you will let Christ have unhindered flow 
into your will and your affections, you will be 
not barren or unfruitful, but will abound in the 
work of the Lord. Take a large life with you 
into heaven. 



PREPAID PRAYERS. 



121 



PREPAID PRAYERS. 



I MET with, this expression lately; and while 
it is open to criticism, it suggests a vitally im- 
portant truth, a truth also which many good 
people ignore, and therefore their prayers are un- 
productive of any blessings. If we expect a let- 
ter to reach its destination we prepay it; if we do 
not value it enough to put a two-cent stamp on 
it, then the document is left in the limbo of the 
dead-letter office. It is a lamentable fact that 
there is a dead-prayer office also, and the number 
of well-worded and orthodox petitions which are 
more likely to go thither than to reach the ear of 
the infinite Love is past calculation. 

All valuable things are costly. What we call 
"free salvation " cost the Son of God all the hu- 
miliations of his earthly mission and all the 
agonies of Gethsemane and Golgotha. Nor can 
any sinner obtain the benefit of Christ's atone- 
16 



122 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



ment except at the price of personal obedience to 
the Saviour. Our L,ord wrapped up a very pro- 
found and practical truth in that parable of the 
man who, desiring to possess the " treasure hid 
in a field, " gladly sold all he had and went and 
bought that field. No one can secure the salva- 
tion of his soul unless he or she is willing to pay 
the price which God demands; that price is the 
renunciation of the most darling sins and the 
surrender of the heart and the life to Jesus 
Christ. If you want Christ himself, you must 
give Christ yourself. Here is the pinch that 
keeps millions out of heaven. It kept out Felix 
and Agrippa and all others who have been un- 
willing to submit to God's terms. " You must 
give up your bottle or give up your soul," said a 
plain-spoken pastor to a gentleman in his inqui- 
ry-room. The poor slave of the drink hesitated, 
and then went away clinging to his decanter ! 
The decisive battle for salvation is commonly 
fought over the favorite sins ; for the Master has 
declared that unless a man deny self and take up 
his cross, he cannot be His disciple. 



PREPAID PRAYERS. 



123 



The same principle applies to a vast portion 
of all our prayers. All valuable things cost 
something, and petitions to God are no exception 
to the rule. Prayer is a process in which two 
parties are concerned — the human petitioner and 
the divine bestower of blessings. All God's 
promises have their conditions; we must comply 
with those conditions, or we cannot expect the 
blessings coupled w r ith the promises. No farmer 
is such an idiot as to found his expectation of a 
crop of wheat on God's general promise of seed- 
time and harvest, and yet put in no plough and 
sow no grain. He first does his part, and then 
can reasonably ask the God of nature to give 
him a harvest. In prayer we must do our part 
if we expect that the infinite Giver will do his 
part; there is a legitimate sense in which all of 
us are to do our utmost in the answering of our 
own petitions. 

At a missionary convention a venerated min- 
ister w ? as called upon to offer a prayer. He 
halted and began to fumble in his pocket. " Fa- 
ther A », they want you to pray," whispered 



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somebody in his ear. u Yes, yes," replied the 
wise old man, u but I cannot pray until I have 
given something. n After he had contributed his 
quota towards sending abroad the gospel he 
could with a clear conscience implore the King 
of heaven to give that gospel wide sweep and 
sway. The old man prepaid his prayer. For 
the Christian churches of this age to offer the pe- 
tition, "Thy kingdom come!" and then expend 
only ten millions (the world over) in the enter- 
prise of Foreign Missions, looks almost like a 
solemn farce. As far as God's people are willing 
to prepay their prayers by bestowing money and 
talents and toils for the conversion of the world, 
just so far are their prayers answered. God has 
no blessings for stingy pockets. A great deal of 
the "talk of the lips " in prayer-meetings is 
mere talk, and it " tendeth to penury." 

What is true of pecuniary sacrifices as an evi- 
dence of sincerity is equally true of personal ef- 
forts. Often when I listen to requests for prayer 
for the conversion of a husband or a son or a 
Sabbath scholar, I say to myself, " How much is 



PREPAID PRAYERS. 



125 



that person doing for the conversion of that hus- 
band or child or scholar?" The Christian wife 
who does her utmost to make her daily religion 
attractive to her unconverted husband prepays 
her own prayer. She works with the Holy 
Spirit — not against Him. A noble woman in 
my church was instrumental in the conversion of 
her whole Bible-class ; she prepaid her prayer 
for them by the most winsome personal efforts 
for their salvation. God never defaults; but he 
demands that we prove our faith by our works, 
and that w r e never ask for a blessing that we are 
not ready to labor for. Much of the pious prat- 
tle in prayer-meetings for a " revival n comes to 
nothing because the one who utters the empty 
formula is not reviving himself. He pretends to 
ask the Almighty to do what he will not lift one 
lazy finger for; such prayer is a severe self-con- 
demnation. Let us all beware lest our own 
prayers rise up in judgment against us. 

Genuine, fervent, self-denying, and effective 
prayer is always prepaid. The offerer of it is 
willing to make any sacrifice in order to secure 



1^6 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



the blessing sought. If time or money or labor 
or penitential putting away of sin or any other 
condition be required, the condition is cheerfully 
performed. In brief — every prayer may be said 
to be prepaid for whose fulfilment we are ready, 
at whatever cost, to cooperate with the divine 
Spirit. 



a christian's staying power. 127 



A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWER. 



A robust Christian was the apostle James. 
There is a tradition that he prayed until his 
knees were as hard as the knees of a camel, and 
that the good people in Jerusalem vied with each 
other in touching the hem of his robe. From 
Jerusalem he sent out an epistle to his dispersed 
brethren which reads like the bulletin of a field- 
marshal, and the opening sentences have the 
ring of a bugle. " Hail, brethren !" he ex- 
claims, u count it all joy when ye fall into 
manifold trials, knowing that the proof of your 
faith worketh patience. And let, patience have 
its perfect work." The Greek word here trans- 
lated u patience" literally signifies staying: then 
it came to mean persistent endurance, whether 
in active exertion or under acute suffering:. It 
is the staying power of the rower in a boat-race, 
of the warrior in a fierce battle charge, and of the 
porter weighed down by a heavy burden. 



128 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



Patience, which is one of the grandest of the 
Christian graces, is often dwarfed into a mere 
stoical submission akin to that of a savage tor- 
tured at the stake. What passes for patience 
with some people is rather a callousness of heart. 
Under severe trials the sensibilities have become 
as callous as the horny hands of a furnace-man 
in handling hot iron. A widow, who after the 
death of her husband had lost two children, said 
to her pastor, "That first grief made such a huge 
hole in my heart that it has never held any sor- 
row since that time." From such sullen apathy 
which is past feeling the superb staying power 
of a true Christian is as far removed as faith is 
from blind credulity. Our blessed Lord was 
keenly sensitive to suffering, but how unflinch- 
ingly he endured the severe strain of dealing 
with the sick and the suffering, the bigoted and 
the ungrateful! Homeless, he never complained; 
under the vexations of his crude disciples and 
irritating opponents he never lost temper ; the 
most fiendish assaults of his persecutors never 
wrung a murmur from his lips. His silence was 



a christian's staying power. 129 



sublimer than any other man's utterances. At 
the end of his life of humiliation he leaves only 
a handful of acknowledged followers, calmly 
assured that out of that little band of disciples 
would germinate the Christianity which shall 
yet dominate the globe! Patience had its perfect 
work with him. It is one of the most Christly 
qualities in a well-developed religious life. 

I have been watching the careers of young 
men by the thousand in this busy city for over 
thirty years, and I find that one chief difference 
between the successful and the failures lies in 
the single element of stayiitg power. Perma- 
nent success is oftener won by holding on than 
by sudden dash, however brilliant. The easily 
discouraged who are pushed back by a straw are 
all the time dropping to the rear, to perish or be 
carried along on the stretcher of charity. They 
who understand and practise Abraham Lin- 
coln's homely maxim of u pegging away" have 
achieved the solidest success. It was the honest 
boast of an eminent New Yorker that the first 
dollar he ever earned was for hammering down 

Kewly Enlisted. 17 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



paving stones in the street, and that went to the 
captain of the sloop who brought him a penni- 
less youth to the city. Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
couplet describes in a rather coarse and carnal 
fashion what is vital Christian grace: 

" Stick to your aim ; the mongrel's hold may slip, 
But crowbars can't unloose the mastiff's grip." 

If staying power is indispensable in all secu- 
lar pursuits, it is even more so in the spiritual 
life. Young converts come into our churches 
by platoons, especially in seasons of revival. 
Many fall into the fatal delusion that the main 
thing is done; wdiereas it is only begun. They 
have enlisted for Christ; they have, if genuine 
converts, won the first battle. But the life-cam- 
paign is yet before them. The hardest fighting, 
my young brother, will not be with the hostile 
forces in a wicked world, but with your own self. 
To stand the sneers of scoffers requires some 
courage; to resist the undercurrents of tempta-. 
tion requires the strong anchorage of godly prin^ 
ciple. But the mastery of yourself is the great 
achievement. To hold temper in perfect control, 



a christian's staying power. 131 

to keep base passions subdued, to keep your pow- 
ers and purposes true and straight to the one 
purpose of serving, obeying, and honoring Jesus 
Christ — this is the secret of a strong Christian 
life. The Revised Version of the New Testa- 
ment brings out this idea beautifully in the pas- 
sage " In your patience ye shall win your souls. n 
Before you can win anybody else's soul to Christ 
you must u win n your own. This can only be 
accomplished by steady conflict with sin, by com- 
pletely joining your weakness to the almighty 
strength of your Saviour. Christ's mastery of 
you will give you self-mastery. 

Paul did not claim to be a perfect man; but 
he had a prodigious staying power. "I keep 
my body under," he exclaims. As a boxer who 
is in a sharp encounter, he constantly beats 
down with steady and sturdy blows the unruly 
appetites and lusts. The moment that a Chris- 
tian lets the carnal nature get the upper hand 
he is overthrown. Nor can he hold down the 
"old man" of sin except as he holds to Christ 
and is held by him. Let every young convert 



132 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



carefully and squarely count the cost of a vigor- 
ous, successful Christian life; it need not dis- 
courage or appall him; yet he will be pretty sure 
to become an early deserter unless he equips 
himself for a life-campaign under the Captain of 
his salvation. 

Impatience is the prevailing sin of the times; 
impatience to be suddenly rich, impatience un- 
der restraint, impatience with slow and thorough 
processes. A Christian character is no more to 
be finished in a day than was one of Thorwald- 
sen's statues. You have got to learn patience 
by some sharp disappointments. You have not 
learned the prime secret of acceptable prayer if 
you have not learned to "wait quietly on the 
L,ord. n We cannot either scold or tease our 
Heavenly Father into granting our desires. 
Faith has nothing to do with fretting, either 
under a hard lot or under the delays of prayed- 
for blessings. Patient prayer is powerful prayer. 
If thou hast come into Christ's school, submit 
to his lessons and his tasks; one of them is — 
u Not as I will, but as Thou wilt" 



A CHRISTIAN'S STAYING POWER. 1 33 

This virtue of holding on is absolutely indis- 
pensable to all successful Christian work. How 
many volunteers are constantly dropping out of 
our Sabbath-school teacherships and out of mis- 
sion work as soon as the novelty is off! How 
many ministers are begging for release from 
"hard fields/' some of them ready to run when 
God may be just ready to send the shower to start 
the seed they have sown ! Too much of the 
Christian labor in our land ends in a spasmodic 
spirt of enthusiasm. "Well-doing" comes to 
nothing unless there be "patient continuance" 
in it. Brethren, let us remember that Christian 
patience is not only a waiting on God, it is a 
steady working for God. Christ in us is the only 
staying power. The soldier who stands fire to 
the last shot wins the victory. And up yonder 
they who are arrayed in the white robes are they 
who "came out of great tribulations." "Here 
is the patie7ice of the saints; here are they that 
kept the commandments of God and the faith of 
Jesus!" 



J 34 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 



The houses of the people of Palestine in an- 
cient times were not lighted by candles; there- 
fore the translation of the fifteenth verse of the 
fifth chapter of Matthew in our common version 
is not correct. In the house of the poorest peas- 
ant was a lamp. A small cup or other vessel 
was filled with oil, a bit of linen rag or a wick 
was set afloat in it, and the simple contrivance 
was set on a lamp-stand. To put it under a 
couch or to hide it under a grain measure would 
be absurd. Our Lord, in his Sermon on the 
Mount, alludes to the familiar lamp in every 
dwelling, and then says to his followers, u So let 
your light shine before men." This is the man- 
ner in which every Christian should be luminous. 
The word " so " refers back to the previous verse. 
The motive for doing this then follows, namely, 
" that men may see your good works and glorify 



BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 135 

your Father which is in heaven." Not for mere 
ostentation and self-glorification were they to 
make a display of their religion, neither were they 
to conceal it by either indolence or cowardice. 

The crying want of the times is more bright 
Christians. There are quite too many church 
members who were kindled for a little while — 
perhaps during the heat of a revival season — and 
then the light has either been smuggled into a 
dark lantern, or else allowed to die down into a 
feeble glimmer, barely visible through the smoke. 
For no merely selfish purpose does Jesus Christ 
bestow his converting grace upon any man. 
He touched your heart with his illuminating 
grace chiefly that you might impart the benefit 
of your light to others and glorify him. He 
commanded the light to shine into the darkness 
of your sinful soul that you might give the light 
of the knowledge of God as seen in the face of 
Jesus to all with whom you come in contact 
You mav not be a magnificent Fresnel-burner 
like a Chalmers or a Wesley in their day, or 
like a Spurgeon or a Shaftesbury or a Dodge in 



136 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



our times. But the properties of light are the 
same in a household lamp that they are in the 
huge luminary that flashes from the tower at 
Sandy Hook; and in your little circle there is 
just as much need of a bright Christian as there 
is in the most conspicuous pulpit of Christen- 
dom. 

If you neglect to let your light shine, how- 
ever humble it may be, not only will your own 
character suffer, but somebody else will be the 
worse for it. The simple failure of a signal-man 
to swing his lantern at the right time has sent a 
railway train into deadly ruin. Your failure to 
utter the right word, to do the right thing, or to 
exert the right influence, may be sending some 
others off the track in the same fatal fashion. I 
know of certain households — perhaps yours may 
be one — in which the lamp smokes more than it 
shines. That son would not be so troubled with 
skepticism jf he saw a more attractive living 
evidence of Christianity in the daily conduct of 
his professedly Christian parents. Another son 
would not be seen so often on his way to the 



BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 137 

saloon or some other dangerous haunt if the 
torch of both warning and example were held up 
faithfully and lovingly. It is almost hopeless to 
expect conversions in some families. One rea- 
son is that there is a lamp of profession there 
which smokes foully instead of beaming brightly. 
The light that is in that house is fast becoming 
darkness. The oil has given out. Love of the 
world, or the greed of selfishness or some other 
sin, has extinguished the love of Christ. The 
real cause of all spiritual declension fs the lack 
of a Christly love and loyalty in the heart. 
When people are full of any subject they will 
speak out; they cannot help it. When your soul 
is on fire with the love of Jesus and of your fel- 
low-men, you will burn and shine unconsciously. 
Probably the most effective good which most 
genuine Christians do is in the way of steady, 
silent, and unconscious reflection of Jesus Christ 
in their daily conduct. To preach % a sermon or 
teach a mission-school class, or distribute Bibles 
or bread among the needy, is a direct, premedi- 
tated act of lamp-bearing. But to live along day 

18 



i 3 8 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



after day luminously reflecting Christ in word 
and deed at home, in the store, in the shop, and 
everywhere else, is just " letting the light shine " 
of its own sweet accord. That is the sort of reli- 
gion that tells. And however glibly Brother 
A may speak in the prayer-meeting or how- 
ever brightly Sister B may shine in her 

Dorcas Society or "holiness meeting," yet if 
they end in smoke at home, theirs is but a dark 
and dreary dwelling. Trim the household lamp, 
good friends. A revival of thorough home piety 
is the most needed revival in these times for 
the well-being of both church and common- 
wealth. 

Light is a combination of many rays, and 
each white ray a combination of many colors. 
If you apply the spectrum to a bright Christian 
you will find that he sheds out various graces. 
Chiefest of all is the ray of love. This is the 
supreme grace which most completely reflects 
Christ Jesus and which imparts the golden efful- 
gence to a true, fervent Christian life. It is not 
a flash of sentiment or fitful gush of emotion, but 



BRIGHT CHRISTIANS. 



139 



a steady anthracite flame, which glows all day 
and all night because the divine fire is burning 
in the soul. u So have I loved you," saith the 
Master; " continue ye in my love." Where this 
lamp beams the humblest home will be bright- 
ened, the hardest pillow will be softened, the 
coarsest fare will be sweetened. Love is the 
best grace Christ can give us, for in it he gives 
himself. It is the best we can return to him, for 
in it we give ourselves. 

A bright Christian will fling out the steady 
rays of cheerfulness. This is not an unsaintly 
quality; a dark, foggy day is not half as heav- 
enly as a sunny day. The natural note of a bird 
is not a scream or a groan, but a spontaneous 
song. When a young man or woman becomes 
converted to Christ none of their companions 
ought to say, " They used to be pleasant, but 
how dull and mopy they are now!" Nor ought 
a Christian ever to enter any circle with the 
chill of an icicle or the depressing effect of a wet 
blanket. And there is another radiation which 
a bright Christian will emit, and that is good 



140 NEWLY ENLISTED. 

temper. We too often think of ill temper as a 
constitutional weakness or a mere unhappy in- 
firmity. Prof. Drummond has pungently said in 
one of his late addresses, u 111 temper is a sin, 
one of the blackest of sins; it is the symptom of 
an unloving nature at bottom. The man who 
has it needs to have his whole nature sweetened. 
Such a man would make heaven miserable; he 
must be born again before he can enter it." 

Here are a few of the rays which a bright 
Christian will reflect while he is reflecting Christ. 
Trim your lamp, brother. Feed it afresh with 
prayer for more oil and with fresh inlettings of 
Jesus into your soul. Carry your, lamp always 
with you as the miners carry theirs on their hats. 
The world may discover Jesus Christ in you 
when they would find him in no other way. 
Light other people's lamps. A bright Christian 
is a ray shot from the throne of heaven into this 
dark world. " Keep your loins girded and your 
lamps burning. " 



LABOR FOR SOULS. 



141 



LABOR FOR SOULS. 



" You know a great deal, Dr. Beecher," said 
a man to the Boanerges on Litchfield Hill, 4 'but 
what is the greatest of all things?" The quick 
reply was, "It is not theology, it is not contro- 
versy; it is saving souls." This has been the 
keynote with all the choicest spirits in Christ's 
army corps from the days of Paul, whose motto 
was, "If by all means I may save some of them." 
No one has come up to this high calling until he 
has learned to love an immortal soul irrespect- 
ive of its trappings and surroundings — the soul 
of a beo^ar as much as that of a millionaire. 
David Brainerd — who may perhaps be regarded 
as the holiest man the American church has 
seen — had for his parish the red barbarians on 
the banks of the Delaware. "I care not," he 
says, "where I live or how I live or what hard- 
ships I go through, so that I can but gain souls 



142 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



to Christ. While I am asleep I dream of these 
things; as soon as I awake, the first thing I 
think of is this great work. All my desire is 
the conversion of sinners, and all my hope is 
in God." 

These are apples of gold for us pastors and 
for all living Christians. Not vague effort which 
ends in smoke, but direct effort brought to bear 
upon a soul. Men are saved or lost individually. 
The sagacious apostle did not evaporate the idea 
into any vague generalities about " reaching the 
masses, " etc.; he distinctly says that "he who 
converteth a sinner from the error of his way 
shall save a soul from death and shall cover 
a multitude of sins." A single soul was a 
sufficient audience for the Sou of God at Sy- 
char's well and in the inquiry room with Nico- 
demus. 

To convert signifies to turn around and start 
in the opposite direction. Conversion is the 
penitent sinner's own act in turning from that 
path which leads hellward and setting his foot- 
steps into the path of obedience to God. Regen- 



LABOR FOR SOULS. 



H3 



eration is the work of the Holy Spirit, who influ- 
ences and enables the sinner to turn. The di- 
vine Spirit and the human will work in blessed 
partnership; neither can do the work without 
the other. But the apostle James recognizes a 
third party when he speaks of one's converting 
a sinner from the error of his way. Then it ap- 
pears that it is possible for me to convert my 
neighbor. Not, of course, that I can change his 
heart or regenerate him into the new life; a 
saved sinner is not, nor ever can be, a sinner's 
saviour. Jesus alone can be that. But I can 
bring an influence to bear upon my neighbor; I 
can ply him with arguments and entreaties; I can 
put God's claims before him; I can set gospel 
religion before him attractively by kind acts and 
consistent example; and so I may move him to 
move himself towards Christ. This is what we 
understand by a Christian's converting a soul. 
Self-conceited itinerants do, indeed, often boast 
of the number of their converts, which prove to 
be as worthless specimens as Whitefield's tipsy 
friend who claimed to be his convert. But still 



144 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



the mighty fact remains, for God's Word declares 
it, that a servant of Jesus can convert a sinner 
from his evil way and thus save a soul from 
death. 

This is a tremendous trust. No power vested 
in any human being can compare with this one 
of moving an immortal creature from the slavery 
of Satan and the doom of hell into a pathway of 
life everlasting. What a trust, brother! Think 
of it. Father, mother, teacher, Christian friend, 
just think what a stupendous prize God sets be- 
fore you and what a prodigious responsibility 
He lays upon you! God seems to say to you, 
" Here is this immortal soul, worth more than 
all worlds, for Jesus died for it; here is this soul; 
now convert him unto Me. I put him in your 
way; I give you the opportunity; I will supply 
you with the help; save this precious soul!" 
This is not profanity, nor is it poetry. God does 
this very thing when he commissions his children 
to pray, toil, and live for the conversion of the 
lost. Nay, he declares that if we do not warn 
the sinner to turn from his wicked way, that soul 



LABOR FOR SOULS. 



145 



shall die in his iniquity, but "his blood will I re- 
quire at thy hand!" 

The threatening for unfaithfulness is as tre- 
mendous as the trust; the reward of fidelity is 
glorious enough to whet the appetite of an arch- 
angel. It will be a crown indeed to be laid at 
Jesus' feet if we discover even a single soul in 
heaven whom you or I have been instrumental 
in converting from the error of his way. We 
pity those who have no such star-crowns. 

I am confident that we who call ourselves 
Christians do not begin to face these mighty 
facts as we ought; we do not set squarely before 
our eyes the trust of sotds and our vast accounta- 
bilities for them. The more we do this the more 
intensely will we give ourselves to this most 
Christlike endeavor. Our own heart must first 
be moved for the one we may convert. Mere 
hap-hazard counts for nothing. Fix your eyes 
on the friend whom you mean to reach and to 
labor for. Take hold of that case as Harlan 
Page took hold of young Kdwin F. Hatfield, 
with a grip of personal interest — loving him 

Newly Enlisted. I 9 



146 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



enough to tell him plain truth. Watch oppor- 
tunities; in doing do not overdo. He that win- 
neth souls is wise because he first asks God to 
make him so. Worrying an unconverted friend 
by incessant "nagging" at him, preaching at 
him in a certain Pharisaic tone, or addressing 
him in a public way so as to mortify or disgust 
him — all such blunders show more zeal than 
common sense. 

But remember that the most terrible blunder 
of all is to let a soul go to perdition without one 
effort to save it! It seems to me, sometimes, 
that it will be enough to make us half crazy in 
heaven not to find there some souls that we 
ought to have striven, yes, 1 4 agonized," to bring 
there. And there is no preparation for heaven 
that can compare with the unselfish, patient, 
prayer-steeped, and Christlike labor and life for 
perishing souls. The nearer a soul is to us, the 
greater the responsibility for it. May God help 
us all to follow u Weeks of Prayer" with many 
weeks of putting prayer into practice! 



the wise and winsome; walk. 



i47 



THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK. 



The early Christian church was born in a 
prayer-meeting, and baptised by the Holy Spirit 
on the day of Pentecost ; it then set about its 
heaven-appointed mission of converting men to 
Christ. Peter's pungent sermon to the Jerusa- 
lem sinners pierced their hearts with conviction, 
and three thousand were converted in a single 
day. The book of the Acts of the Apostles is 
largely a record of personal labors for winning 
souls; the Epistles are not addressed to the hea- 
then or to impenitent sinners, but to the newly- 
born churches, teaching them how to live. In- 
struction in the Christian life is the main topic 
of Paul and Peter, John and James. And one 
idea runs through them all, and that is that 
Christ's people are to live in such a way as not 
only to honor their Master, but in such a way as 
to attract the outside world to him. 



148 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



"Walk in wisdom towards them that are 
without" was one of Paul's pithy and pungent 
injunctions. Christ came into this world to seek 
and to save those who were lost. His commis- 
sion to his disciples was to go after the "out- 
siders n and to bring them in. That commission 
is as binding on Christians to-day as it was 
eighteen hundred years ago. Every one now 
who enters the church of Jesus Christ enters not 
only into peculiar relations with Christ, but into 
peculiar duties towards the unconverted. "Ye 
are my witnesses;" "Ye are the light of the 
world, so let your lights shine that ye may be 
seen of men." The outside world watches us 
sharply, and our Master intended that we should 
be watched. It is a stereotyped truth that the 
professed Christian is the world's Bible. He is 
the only Bible that the majority of outsiders ever 
look at. They form their impressions of Chris- 
tianity, not as it is revealed in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, but as it is revealed in us. They do not 
study God's Bible, but they do study church 
members. Now, if we are the world's Bible, we 



THE WISE AND WINSOME WALK. 149 

ought to live in such a way as not to require any 
commentary to explain us. If we are doorkeep- 
ers to the way of life and the fold of Christ, we 
are put there to attract the outsiders and draw 
them in — not to block the door and drive them 
off. Every inconsistent church member is guilty 
of a triple sin — first towards Christ, secondly to- 
wards his own soul, and then towards the impen- 
itent whom he repels when he ought to be win- 
ning them. 

1. What is a u wise walk towards them that 
are without"? In the first place it is such a 
walk as does not give the lie to our professions. 
We tell the unconverted that the religion of Je- 
sus Christ will make them cheerful under trials, 
and then, perhaps, fall to fretting at Providence 
and put on a distressing gloom as soon as trials 
smite us in the face. We talk about patience, 
and lose temper under the first provocation. In 
the prayer-meeting we pray as if religion was 
the u one thing needful," but elsewhere live as 
if money-grabbing or social ambition were the 
chief end of our lives. What is all this but be- 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



lying our Christianity and disgusting other peo- 
ple with it? If in walking through an orchard 
we pick up a fair-looking apple, but on putting 
our teeth in it find it setting our teeth on edge, 
we fling it down and try no more from that tree. 
So the world tastes of Christians, and if they find 
them sour or bitter in temper or worm-eaten, 
they turn away in disgust and disappointment. 
"By your fruits shall men know you," says 
our Master. We must make our religion taste 
sweet if we want to recommend it to outsiders. 
When a man of the world says scoffingly, u One 
of your church members cheated me in trade," I 
feel that the wickedest part of the fraud was that 
he robbed the man of his respect for the religion 
of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, a noble, 
honest, godly life is the most convincing sermon 
that can be delivered. Christ's people have got 
to live the world to him, or the world is lost 

2. We never can win outsiders by compromi- 
sing with them. " Woe unto you when all men 
shall speak well of you" — i, e. , when the lovers 
of sin shall applaud you. A minister of Christ 



THE WISE) AND WINSOME WALK. 151 

may purchase his popularity at the dear price of 
losing all his influence over men's consciences. 
Human favor gained by connivance with 
wrong — in business, in politics, in social fash- 
ions — is treason to our Master. The people of 
tliU world do not expect Christians to do as they 
do. When we surrender our principles they are 
secretly shocked and disgusted. If we would 
draw men out of a pit we must have a firm, 
strong foothold or they will draw us in. He 
who walks closest to Christ will have the most 
power to convert sinners to Him. When Jesus 
lives in us, it is not we who move others; it is 
the Christ incarnated in our conduct. u I tried 
to be a skeptic when I was a young man," said 
Cecil; "but my mother's life was too much for 
me," It was Jesus Christ in his good mother 
that converted him. 

3. This subject has a vital bearing on all 
direct efforts for the conversion of the impeni- 
tent. u He that is wise winneth souls;" that is 
the correct reading of the often perverted text. 
It is astonishing to observe how little common 



152 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



sense some good people exhibit in their well- 
meant efforts to bring their children or their 
scholars or their friends to the Saviour. A fa- 
ther will ask for prayers for an unconverted son, 
and then treat the boy so harshly or talk to him 
so tauntingly as only to harden him. Noth- 
ing requires more tact and gentleness and loving 
kindness than to converse with persons on the 
most vital of all questions. If we want to water 
a flower we don't dash a whole pailful on it and 
wash it out of the ground; we sprinkle it. God 
does not send his Spirit as a water-spout, but as 
a rain. Let us pray for wisdom when we are 
trying to win souls. Paul was consumed with 
seal, and yet showed wonderful sagacity in adap- 
tation to every case he took hold of. 

We must watch for opportunities. u Walk in 
wisdom towards them that are without," says 
the apostle, u redeeming the time. n The literal 
meaning of the phrase is "buying the opportu- 
nity." Chances must be sought for to put in the 
right word; and when God gives us the chance 
we must make the most of it. Here was the se- 



the wise And winsome walk. 153 

cret of Harlan Page's wonderful success in win- 
ning souls. He watched for opportunities and 
then spoke a very plain, close-fitting truth in a 
very loving way. There was no cant about hiin. 
The Spirit of God helped him, as he will always 
help us if we aim to please our Master. 

We must go on the principle now or never. 
This will make us eager to embrace opportuni- 
ties; and in turn we must urge the impenitent to 
accept Christ at once. Every act of kindness we 
can do to the unconverted may help to give us a 
key to their hearts. Then let us use it to intro- 
duce our Master there. They that are wise in 
their walk and wise in their work may turn 
many to righteousness. 



20 



154 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 

• 



KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 

One of the peculiar glories of Christianity is 
that it presents to us a perfect Model for our 
daily conduct. No other religion can produce a 
Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ is Christianity. 
It is not the gospel system that saves us; it is the 
gospel's Redeemer. That preaching is the most 
effective which most clearly and persuasively 
presents Jesus as the divine Saviour, Substitute, 
and Surety; that life is the most symmetrical 
and holy which is the most closely copied after 
him as the divine Model. 

There is not a more beautiful episode in the 
life of our Lord than that one which occurred at 
the beginning of his last supper with his disci- 
ples, when he did what none but a slave was wont 
to do: he washed his disciples' feet? Having per- 
formed this wonderful act of humility and un- 



KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 155 

selfishness, he says to them, u I have given you 
an example, that ye should do as I have done to 
you." Not that we are literally to wash each 
other's feet; but we are to fill each other's hands, 
bear each other's loads, dry each other's tears, 
and comfort each other's hearts. 

Again, the enthusiastic Peter in his first 
Epistle tells us that " Christ also suffered for us, 
leaving us an example, that ye should follow his 
steps." The Greek word signifies a writing-copy 
to be closely imitated in every stroke of the pen. 
Paul has the same idea in his mind when he bids 
us to "look at Jesus, the author and the perfecter 
of our faith." And if I were asked to give a 
simple golden counsel to a young convert which 
could be easily remembered and which would be 
available for every emergency in life, it would 
be this: Keep your eye on Jesus ! 

The godly Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, 
kept a picture of the heroic missionary, Henry 
Martyn, hanging on the wall of his room. Look- 
ing up towards it he would often say, " There ! 
See that blessed man ! What an expression of 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



countenance ! No one looks at me as he does. 
He seems always to be saying to me, 1 Be serious; 
be in earnest; don't trifle.' " Then bowing to- 
wards the benign, thoughtful face of Marty n, 
Simeon would add, " No, I wont, I wont trifle." 

If there was an inspiration to earnestness 
always to be caught from looking at a noble and 
Christlike man, how much more from looking 
at Christ himself. The divine Spirit has pre- 
sented in the New Testament a matchless pic- 
ture, and has hung it up, as it were, before our 
eyes. It is the infinitely beautiful countenance 
of my Lord and Master. It is u marred more 
than any other of the sons of men " by the traces 
of the struggle in Gethsemane and the agony on 
the cross. The most serene patience sits on that 
countenance, as when he u answered not a word" 
to Pilate, and as when he prayed, u Father, for- 
give them. They know not what they do." 
Every lineament of that face is love. Holiness 
spreads an ineffable grandeur over it which no 
Raphael or Da Vinci can reproduce. Ten thou- 
sand-fold more real, more inspiring, more soul- 



KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 1 57 

rousing than any painting is the image to my 
eye of Him who ever says, " Look at me; learn 
of ME. n 

Yes, and how earnestly he says to us, "Live 
for me 1" Sometimes we recoil from a disagree- 
able duty or a painful load. How promptly 
those lips of our Lord speak to us: u Whosoever 
will not take up his cross and come after me is 
not worthy of me." At another time w r e are 
cast down with disappointment; perhaps a chill 
of despair is settling over our hearts. Just then 
the dear divine face draws very close to us, and 
we hear the warm words, " Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Lo! I am 
with you alway. My grace is sufficient for 
thee. " When we are tempted to a resentful 
word or a dishonest deed, the countenance re- 
bukes us with the admonition, u Wound me not 
in the house of my friends. n As Peter's tears 
were started by a single look of his grieved Mas- 
ter, so ours may well be stirred by every act of 
disloyalty to him. And when we have come 
back ashamed and disgraced from a cowardly de- 



158 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



sertion of the right in an hour of sharp trial, oh, 
how that face upbraids us as Jesus seems to say, 
" Could ye not watch w T ith me one hour I" Ev- 
ermore is that divine Monitor and Model before 
our eyes, teaching, rebuking, inspiring, encour- 
aging, comforting, and guiding us. Let me 
fasten my gaze on him! Let me open my ears 
to him! Let me be ever treading in his foot- 
steps, that wherever he is I may be also! 

Certain choice spirits of the human race have 
shone in some peculiar virtue, as Joseph in chas- 
tity, Daniel in integrity, Luther in courage, 
Wilberforce and Elisabeth Fry in philanthropy. 
But these were only imperfect copies of the 
divine ideal of life set before them. Let us keep 
our eyes steadfastly upon One who embraced in 
himself all virtues and excellences in full perfec- 
tion, and who in every possible point is an ex- 
ample for us. Our daily and hourly conflict is 
with sin. Jesus did no sin, yet temptations came 
to him as really as they come to us, for he was a 
man beset just as we are. He conquered tempta- 
tions by never presumptuously running into dan- 



KEEPING THE EYE ON JESUS. 159 

ger, by resisting first suggestions to evil, and by 
using that sword of the Spirit which is the Word 
of God. 

Christ is our model too in consecration to the 
Father's will. His meat was to perform that 
will. His untiring motto was, "My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work. 0 Between the 
activities of the Father in heaven and of the in- 
carnate Son there was no discord and no jar. 
When I can lay down my daily plans of life 
upon God's revealed Word and find them fit, 
then what satisfaction does the humblest act 
bring to me ! Ever too let us observe how ut- 
terly unselfish Jesus was: what journeyings to 
reach single cases of suffering; what braving of 
popular scorn to befriend the publican and the 
outcast; what endless expenditure of sympathy; 
what tireless going about doing good! When 
that gentle spirit of his was aroused by the sight 
of hypocrisy and falsehood, how he could scathe 
and scorch the Pharisee with his righteous indig- 
nation! Those overflowings of indignation were 
the surcharge of his holiness. When I behold 



NEWLY ENLISTED. 



my Master anathematizing the " whited sepul- 
chres " of sin, and yet pronouncing pardon on a 
penitent harlot, I learn just how I should keep 
in proper poise my hatred for iniquity and my 
pitying love for those who u are overtaken in a 
fault. " 

And so let every day of my life be spent be- 
fore my great Teacher's face and my eyes never 
wander from that wonderful form! As soon let 
the drowning man forget the plank which sus- 
tains him in the sea as for me to forget the Sa- 
viour who upholds me with his omnipotent arm. 
As soon let the home-bound mariner lose sight of 
the lighthouse which guides him to his haven as 
for you and me to lose sight of Him who is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life. Reynolds used 
to say, 1 4 1 only look at the best pictures. A bad 
one spoils my eye." In like manner shall we 
find that the study of our King in his beauty 
shall purify our vision; and the more we look at 
Jesus the more shall we look like Jesus. 



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